Theory: Pokémon SV expected better hardware

[MayorBryce]

Note that this does not forgive Game Freak for making such a poorly optimized game. This is simply a possible explanation.

This is also a theory. Feel free to debunk it.

More Powerful Hardware?

It’s a theory at this point the OLED Switch was planned to be the Switch Pro. The evidence? The system is much more power efficient and capable of higher clocks compared to other models. And although the v2 and Lite have the same chip, the hardware isn’t capable of handling the higher clocks, since the former was rushed to patch the v1's chip exploit and the latter is designed solely for handheld, not docked. One need only look at Switch OC Suite's numbers to see the higher clocks.

Work on Pokemon SV started in 2018. If they had been told that sometime in 2020-21 a Switch Pro was coming out, optimization might've dropped to a back-burner; after all, if the next system can handle it, why optimize for current systems?

Covid Happened

Then, disaster struck. Covid. Chip shortages everywhere delayed the launch of the Switch Pro and forced Nintendo's hand. The Switch had been out for nearly 4 years, halfway through the system's lifespan. If they didn't put out a Switch Pro now, they'd miss their window.

And yet, chip shortages continued until 2021. Nintendo simply didn't have the chips needed to mass-produce their Switch Pro. So, they settled for what they had: the Tegra X1+ chip, OLED screen, kickstand, etc. and forgoed any stronger chips or hardware necessary for the Switch Pro.

Game Freak's Dilemma

Likely, Legends: Arcues was planned to be optimized for the original Switch, and BDSP was outsourced to focus on this task. This left Pokemon SV in a difficult scenario: no Switch Pro to compensate for their poor performance and a half-finished game. They were out of options. So, development likely shifted to pushing out every drop of performance. The game would run at 720p if it was the last thing they did.

At... they did it. At the cost of literally everything else. Draw distance was heavily cut, the game can't hold 30fps, textures look terrible, the bug list is longer than the Pokedex, and the list goes on. Had the Switch Pro come out to save them, the game may have ran decently. And yet, without the Switch Pro, they barely made it out the door in time.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk. This is just a theory.

 

[ChanseyIsTheBest]

Note that this does not forgive Game Freak for making such a poorly optimized game. This is simply a possible explanation.

This is also a theory. Feel free to debunk it.

More Powerful Hardware?

It’s a theory at this point the OLED Switch was planned to be the Switch Pro. The evidence? The system is much more power efficient and capable of higher clocks compared to other models. And although the v2 and Lite have the same chip, the hardware isn’t capable of handling the higher clocks, since the former was rushed to patch the v1's chip exploit and the latter is designed solely for handheld, not docked. One need only look at Switch OC Suite's numbers to see the higher clocks.

Work on Pokemon SV started in 2018. If they had been told that sometime in 2020-21 a Switch Pro was coming out, optimization might've dropped to a back-burner; after all, if the next system can handle it, why optimize for current systems?

Covid Happened

Then, disaster struck. Covid. Chip shortages everywhere delayed the launch of the Switch Pro and forced Nintendo's hand. The Switch had been out for nearly 4 years, halfway through the system's lifespan. If they didn't put out a Switch Pro now, they'd miss their window.

And yet, chip shortages continued until 2021. Nintendo simply didn't have the chips needed to mass-produce their Switch Pro. So, they settled for what they had: the Tegra X1+ chip, OLED screen, kickstand, etc. and forgoed any stronger chips or hardware necessary for the Switch Pro.

Game Freak's Dilemma

Likely, Legends: Arcues was planned to be optimized for the original Switch, and BDSP was outsourced to focus on this task. This left Pokemon SV in a difficult scenario: no Switch Pro to compensate for their poor performance and a half-finished game. They were out of options. So, development likely shifted to pushing out every drop of performance. The game would run at 720p if it was the last thing they did.

At... they did it. At the cost of literally everything else. Draw distance was heavily cut, the game can't hold 30fps, textures look terrible, the bug list is longer than the Pokedex, and the list goes on. Had the Switch Pro come out to save them, the game may have ran decently. And yet, without the Switch Pro, they barely made it out the door in time.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk. This is just a theory.

The OLED, v2 and Lite have the exact same SoC. The OLED's chip isn't more efficient or more powerful as its the same SoC as v2 and Lite. OLEDs are equally capable of handling the same clocks as v2s and the only reason the Lite isn't is because some parts the board are rated for 12W not 18W like all other Switches + Lite has nerfed battery. There are Erista's that have the RCM exploit patched (ipatched units) already after the hacking started so v2 wasn't rushed out.

They should have make the dynamic resolution a lot more aggressive to docked to like 540p instead of the minimum threshold being about 720p. That would have helped with some of the framerate drops. 1963/1228/2400 gives you an essentially locked 30fps and maxes out the dynamic resolution at 1080p. It's nice they set the dynamic resolution max so high for basically no reason.

 

[MayorBryce]

The OLED's chip isn't more efficient or more powerful

This could be because of the chip shortage, like a more powerful chip or at least more power-capable components could've been included; however, I'm no expert.

1963/1228/2400 gives you an essentially locked 30fps and maxes out the dynamic resolution at 1080p.

Evidently, the game would've run at Game Freak's standard of 1080p30 had more power been given, something the OLED would've been capable of had the clocks been unlocked. Alas, the potential of Pokemon SV will forever be locked to the homebrew community.

 

[ChanseyIsTheBest]

This could be because of the chip shortage, like a more powerful chip or at least more power-capable components could've been included; however, I'm no expert.

You said original post that the OLED has a stronger chip then the v2 and Lite when this isn't the case at all and say that this is evidence for a supposed Switch Pro while the OLED in the final shipped and sold Switch doesn't match what you are saying in the slightest.

 

[Laguna78]

No they got greedy and went with rushed releases to make a quick buck. The game ios buggy, it is still today, better hardware will have zero factor when there are gaps in the map where you can fall through and allot exploits to this day. Clearly the devs weren't given enough time to complete the game and upper management saw that a delay wont mean in increase in sales as it will sell in its current state. The proof of greed ios the lack of updates fixing the bugs, fixing the graphics and no more addition to the gameplay... I mean why bother when they can put the manpower towards the next game and iterate what they already done with fixes and significant improvments to the graphics and bang great sales for lazy devs or greedy management.

 

[M7L7NK7]

Look at other releases like The Witcher 3, DOOM Eternal.. way more demanding games and the performance is way better than Pokemon

 

[EmanueleBGN]

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom runs smoot on every Nintendo Switch so, the problem with Pokémon Scarleet / Violet is that they aren't well-optimized, meanwile the optimization for TOTK was an year long

 

[Rioluwott]

Theory: Pokémon SV Fans expected a better game​

 

[Darth Meteos]

Yeah, this seems like a reasonable assumption. Good write-up, the dates match, it makes sense. Hopefully the Switch 2 is the Switch Pro we all wanted.

Unfortunately, the dumb responses have already started rolling in. It seems you should only expect more going forward.

 

[MayorBryce]

You said original post that the OLED has a stronger chip then the v2 and Lite when this isn't the case at all and say that this is evidence for a supposed Switch Pro while the OLED in the final shipped and sold Switch doesn't match what you are saying in the slightest.

Where in my post did I say it has a stronger chip? I said it's capable of higher clocks due to more capable hardware, not that it had a stronger chip. Maybe they had a different chip planned, maybe not. The point is that the chip shortage stopped them from making a Switch Pro, and as such Pokemon SV weren't prepared to release solely on Switch.

Just like how Pokemon SM/USUM performs much better on the n3DS due to the extra speed and memory, this was likely what GF had planned before things went south.

 

[BaamAlex]

The problem with Pokemon isn't the hardware. The games are programmed like shit. Optimization is lacking in every nook and cranny. If Gamefreak didn't release a game every year and optimized the games better, then people wouldn't be screaming for a Switch Pro.

And it's really the same every year.

Step 1: Gamefreak shows an unfinished game.
Step 2: It will definitely get better before release. It's still a few months away.
Step 3: Okay, it looks exactly like this. But you have to play the game before you can rate it.
Step 4: Okay, you've played it, but can you stop criticizing the game all the time? Gamefreak learns from its mistakes for the next game. For sure.

And then we end up back at step 1.

So stop yelling for a Switch Pro already. If Pokemon plays like shit on the Switch, then someone please explain to me why Zelda BotW or TotK works so well on the Switch? That's right. Optimization. And that's completely missing from Pokemon. And if I missed the whole point of this thread, correct me pls.

 

[Patxinco]

Just tell me that is needed the amount of ocean that is inside the game and that it not affects the performance of the game.

Around 7:50.

 

[ghjfdtg]

I disagree. The problem is that GameFreak has incompetent programmers. They don't know how to utilize the hardware properly. There are a good number of titles like BotW/TotK showing that the hardware can do more.

Here is one example:
https://blog.ryujinx.org/progress-report-november-2022/

The final Scarlet/Violet graphical bug fix that was squeezed into November resolved an issue with the Pokémon stats graph, where parts would be completely cut off and fail to render. It turns out that GameFreak, to no one's surprise, is using extremely dated rendering methods. Polygon topology is used to draw the hexagon but most Vulkan drivers, and a fair few OpenGL drivers, do not support the extensions required anymore. Nvidia does still support GL_POLYGON in compatibility mode but no such equivalent exists in Vulkan. Luckily for us, convex polygons can be identically rendered via a triangle fan (imagine a fan of triangles around a single point) which, as has been stated in previous reports, is a breeze for modern computer graphics renderers.

 

[mightymuffy]

A good theory, no doubt about it. But a better theory is Gamefreak simply isn't big enough to pull of a game the size of Pokemon, with current gen scope/expectations, in 1-2 years. Current gen games require upwards of 5 years to make. It boggles the mind that the Pokemon Company/Nintendo thinks that a AA (not AAA)-sized game developer can produce near-yearly full sized games of the largest franchise in the world... In order to release a Pokemon title as much as expected you're gonna need a group of teams at least the size of the ones working on Call of Duty games. Gamefreak is nowhere near that size.

 

[MayorBryce]

So stop yelling for a Switch Pro already.

For starters, I am not yelling for a Switch Pro. If I want better performance, overclocking exists.

And if I missed the whole point of this thread, correct me pls.

The point of this thread is to show a possibility. Evidently, the game’s performance is fine at higher clocks (ignoring every other issue with the game). If Game Freak was expecting to be able to utilize these higher clocks, they wouldn’t have focused on optimizing their game as much. Heck, just look at Arceus: the game runs more or less at 1080p30 and looks a million times better than SV. Game Freak is certainly capable of optimizing their games. The problem is that they didn’t this time, and why? There are no pretty visuals they had to compensate for, the only change is a larger map. The only explanation is they wanted an open world game for the next game, and the task was too much. It was either optimization or having an open world, and if a Switch Pro would’ve solved the first problem, they can focus on their game. But then, when a successor didn’t come out due to Covid, they had to pull development to a halt to get the game to a playable state. How much worse could the game have run if they didn’t do that? Maybe the game would’ve looked nicer, but performance would’ve been even worse.

I am not saying Game Freak isn’t at fault here. This could’ve been avoided if they hired more employees and/or delayed the game. But for moneys sake, neither was an option, and this is what we got.

 

[ChanseyIsTheBest]

'It’s a theory at this point the OLED Switch was planned to be the Switch Pro. The evidence? The system is much more power efficient and capable of higher clocks compared to other models.'

The first paragraph you said and like I repeated before OLED is identical power and performance wise to the v2 so the OLED is not more powerful then the v2 meaning it does not have more capable hardware. Saying the OLED is more capable then the v2 is flat out wrong.

What really confuses me is the how are you going to have more capable hardware if the chip is the same that's not how things works? I guess if both are clocked differently and have different maxes but this isnt the case at all in this scenario. The OLED is identical to v2 outside of the bigger eMMC essentially and 64gb vs 32gb internal storage isn't going to make a difference.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I disagree. The problem is that GameFreak has incompetent programmers. They don't know how to utilize the hardware properly. There are a good number of titles like BotW/TotK showing that the hardware can do more.

Here is one example:
https://blog.ryujinx.org/progress-report-november-2022/

BotW/TotK are developed by the same people as the Xenoblade games. They are the exception rather than the norm. That Xenoblade Chronicles was able to run on the Wii/3DS was a marvel of engineering and they are clearly very talented. There are not many with that kind of talent.

However, I agree that Game Freak are incompetent. As I've said multiple times in the past, they really need to hire more talented developers and fire some of their current staff that are holding the company back. But Pokemon always gets compared to BotW/TotK which isn't a realistic expectation when you consider who are the developers behind those.

 

[MayorBryce]

What really confuses me is the how are you going to have more capable hardware if the chip is the same that's not how things works?

Doesn’t have to be the chip. Literally any of the hardware could’ve been impacted by the chip shortage. Again, I’m no expert, but it could’ve been the memory, or the power cables, anything. In the end though, it was cheaper to give it the internals the v2 has.

It’s not like they were going to adjust the clocks for the v2 Switch, even if it had the same hardware. On the flip side, the shiny new OLED would be a perfect recipient of higher clocks. Maybe the chip is capable of the same clocks of the v2, but it won’t, because by adjusting the clocks, they can push more performance out of that system.

Again, this is a case of what could’ve happened. The OLED could’ve been configured to have higher clocks. Game Freak could’ve been expected to build for those clocks. But neither of those happened and this is what we got.

Edit: Sent early.

Post automatically merged: Feb 11, 2024

BotW/TotK are developed by the same people as the Xenoblade games. They are the exception rather than the norm.

This comment made me realize, how many games like BOTW and Xenoblade exist on the Switch and run as well as them? Practically none. Nintendo has to show their console is capable of incredible games, since they’re the ones who built it and know how to optimize their games. By not competing in the performance race, they have to show that underpowered hardware can still look and run great because no one else will.

Unrelated but that’s a random thought I had.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Note that this does not forgive Game Freak for making such a poorly optimized game. This is simply a possible explanation.

This is also a theory. Feel free to debunk it.

More Powerful Hardware?

It’s a theory at this point the OLED Switch was planned to be the Switch Pro. The evidence? The system is much more power efficient and capable of higher clocks compared to other models. And although the v2 and Lite have the same chip, the hardware isn’t capable of handling the higher clocks, since the former was rushed to patch the v1's chip exploit and the latter is designed solely for handheld, not docked. One need only look at Switch OC Suite's numbers to see the higher clocks.

Work on Pokemon SV started in 2018. If they had been told that sometime in 2020-21 a Switch Pro was coming out, optimization might've dropped to a back-burner; after all, if the next system can handle it, why optimize for current systems?

Covid Happened

Then, disaster struck. Covid. Chip shortages everywhere delayed the launch of the Switch Pro and forced Nintendo's hand. The Switch had been out for nearly 4 years, halfway through the system's lifespan. If they didn't put out a Switch Pro now, they'd miss their window.

And yet, chip shortages continued until 2021. Nintendo simply didn't have the chips needed to mass-produce their Switch Pro. So, they settled for what they had: the Tegra X1+ chip, OLED screen, kickstand, etc. and forgoed any stronger chips or hardware necessary for the Switch Pro.

Game Freak's Dilemma

Likely, Legends: Arcues was planned to be optimized for the original Switch, and BDSP was outsourced to focus on this task. This left Pokemon SV in a difficult scenario: no Switch Pro to compensate for their poor performance and a half-finished game. They were out of options. So, development likely shifted to pushing out every drop of performance. The game would run at 720p if it was the last thing they did.

At... they did it. At the cost of literally everything else. Draw distance was heavily cut, the game can't hold 30fps, textures look terrible, the bug list is longer than the Pokedex, and the list goes on. Had the Switch Pro come out to save them, the game may have ran decently. And yet, without the Switch Pro, they barely made it out the door in time.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk. This is just a theory.

I'm positive that even if they had better hardware, they would still find a way to make games run poorly. At least the games might look like Switch games instead of upscaled 3DS games and the animations might run at more than 3 FPS.

 

[ChanseyIsTheBest]

Doesn’t have to be the chip. Literally any of the hardware could’ve been impacted by the chip shortage. Again, I’m no expert, but it could’ve been the memory, or the power cables, anything. In the end though, it was cheaper to give it the internals the v2 has.

It’s not like they were going to adjust the clocks for the v2 Switch, even if it had the same hardware. On the flip side, the shiny new OLED would be a perfect recipient of higher clocks. Maybe the chip is capable of the same clocks of the v2, but it won’t, because by adjusting the clocks, they can push more performance out of that system.

Again, this is a case of what could’ve happened. The OLED could’ve been configured to have higher clocks. Game Freak could’ve been expected to build for those clocks. But neither of those happened and this is what we got.

Edit: Sent early.

Post automatically merged: Feb 11, 2024

This comment made me realize, how many games like BOTW and Xenoblade exist on the Switch and run as well as them? Practically none. Nintendo has to show their console is capable of incredible games, since they’re the ones who built it and know how to optimize their games. By not competing in the performance race, they have to show that underpowered hardware can still look and run great because no one else will.

Unrelated but that’s a random thought I had.

'The evidence? The system is much more power efficient and capable of higher clocks compared to other models.' Quoted from your first post.

That doesn't change the fact the this is completely false. Where is evidence that the released OLED is stronger then the v2 I'll wait.