That would be great IF the current hardware could handle the games. It can't - even indie games mostly can't sustain 30fps and rely heavily on resolution scaling which drives the resolution way underneath the internal screens 720p resolution.

Just try something like Apex Legends and you'll see how it pretty much looks like you're seeing through an oily film. Even the DLCs for the console darling, Breath of the Wild, can't sustain smooth 30fps gameplay.

People didn't expect better hardware to get 4K. People expected better hardware to make their games playable on internal 720p screen.

Games should match the hardware spec, not the other way around. It's 100% on the developers to provide a playable game on known hardware spec.

It's just a money grab selling underperforming AAA ports on switch.

If Nintendo, the manufacturer of the console can't do it well for the console exclusive, then maybe... just maybe... might be that the hardware is at fault?

Switch is hardly competitive with modern phone chipsets with its old architecture.

Bringing back my old argument, the appeal of the console for many is striking a balance between portability and power. Yeah, there can be performance issues, but you can play Zelda/Witcher/Dark Souls/DOOM/Skyrim/etc on the go, and you can't get that anywhere else. Certainly things could be improved on the technical side, but the sales numbers indicate that enough people are happy with it.

I’ve got plenty of original Gameboy games, and they all run at 60 FPS just fine. Developers need to design for the hardware.

Nope, the above still applies. That’s a software failure.

Of course that’s not an argument against improving Specs, but to do that they’d probably launch a new generation.

It's not just triple-A ports that struggle on the Switch. Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, which is a Nintendo Switch exclusive remaster of a Nintendo Wii game published by Nintendo themselves, runs somewhere between 540p and 720p when docked, and between 378p and 540p when playing handheld.

I'm not sure that Nintendo cares too much about AAA shooter games.

I pretty much only play Nintendo titles or small indie games and I have never experienced any framerate issues.

As I mentioned, Breath of the Wild itself doesn't run well anymore with its DLCs. Why did you drag in "AAA" shooter games?

Heck, even slow strategy games like XCOM2 don't run well.

> People didn't expect better hardware to get 4K.

let me introduce you /r/nintendo lol. I do see your point. Mid-generation upgrades have been done before and they can work. I still don't think it's necessary. Ultimately developers have to target the old hardware still, so it's not like games will change drastically, and it causes confusion for consumers. That's just my opinion of course.

> Even the DLCs for the console darling, Breath of the Wild, can't sustain smooth 30fps gameplay.

It's not even with the DLCs. Korok Forest, as beautiful as it is, is commonly known as "Frame Drop Forest".

This 100%. I find myself not buying that much on Switch these days because it just runs so poorly. To the point where I question why I even have a Switch at all.

The original Switch was released four years ago. Think about how much hardware has improved in that time. They could drop in today's exact equivalent to what they put in back then (same cost, battery life, etc) and it would almost certainly be a big improvement

An upgrade like that implies hardware and software developing and testing, that cost a lot of money. Possibly more than the margin of benefits that could give them versus a simple new screen.

>If they take steps towards upgrading hardware at the cost of portability or battery life, then it's less appealing.

It would result in an opposite effect. New SoC, developed in 5nm process or 7nm process would consume way less energy, which would dramatically increase battery life.

Yeah, I agree with you. The rumors that have been going around didn't make much sense IMO. (Has Nintendo ever done a hardware upgrade that would have been as drastic? Genuinely asking).

Also yes, the original kickstand made me wonder if anyone at Nintendo had actually tried to use it more than once. It's by far my least favorite part of the Switch.

The DSi has four times the ram and the main processor is twice as fast as the DS.

The GB Color is also twice as fast and has more than double the RAM. (Although one can argue if it's an upgrade or a real "separate" console)

The New 3ds has been mentioned, which is more than 8 times faster and has double the ram.

The only handheld generation where Nintendo didn't do this was the GBA, so it's very common.

Thanks for the list! I didn't knew about the 'New' 3DS.

Though, I would still argue a 4K upgrade is a little far fetched. Nintendo hardware has always been less powerful than that of its 'competitors', who only recently started pushing 4K. (whether or not Nintendo actually competes with Sony and Microsoft is a whole other discussion :P).

> The only handheld generation where Nintendo didn't do this was the GBA, so it's very common.

Since we're talking things that affect portability/battery life in general: The GBA SP, aside from being their first foldable handheld, was the first with an internal light and a built-in rechargeable battery (instead of taking AA or AAA batteries).

Nitpicky, but the New 3DS isnt more than 8 times faster than the Old 3DS: it has a quad core 800MHz processor instead of a dual core 268MHz processor. Even with perfectly scaled multi-threaded code, thats only a ~6x increase.

No idea how that happened, I guess I simply forget the dualcore cpu on the original model. But to one-up the nitpicky-ness one could argue that the "real" game performance still has a more than 8x increase, since both models seem to reserve one core for the OS.

To be fair, the Gameboy Color was sort of its' own generation separate from the GameBoy and the Mini

Nintendo did an upgraded 3ds called "New 3ds" that had a better chip and could run games the regular 3ds couldn't. The only prominent one being a port of the Wii game Xenoblade that they clearly couldn't get working on the regular 3ds.

The xbox one s has a minor clock speed bump over the xbone. I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar here.