That's not really an issue for the stakeholders. Zelda is probably the only game that has this problem. Most hits - Mario Kart, Smash, Splatoon - run at 60FPS.

On the other hand, the 5th and 7th best selling Switch games (Pokemon SS and SV) were notorious for being unable to maintain 15fps. A lot of the workarounds made the game legitimately awful looking (downscaling shadows on the fly for demanding scenes, very reduced draw distances, slowing down and synchronizing background animations to slideshow speeds during battle).

It seems like the Switch is unable to have more than a handful of moderately complex animated objects at a time. It's a problem for Pokemon because they wanted to show a lot of different Pokemon doing different things, it's a problem in Breath of the Wild with just too many trees, and it's certainly a problem with all the Dynasty Warrior clones because the whole appeal of those games is hack and slashing through a big hordes of enemies.

To be fair, the last two Pokemon games were atrociously optimized cash grabs.

They look like Gamecube games honestly, and are generally not impressive from a technical standpoint.

I don't necessarily disagree with the overall point, but BotW and Dynasty Warrior clones are probably a better argument over all.

What makes them unplayable that a doubling of framerate would fix?

Have you played games at 30 and 60 FPS ? I'm not one of those competitive 120+Hz gamers but try setting your desktop refresh rate to 30Hz - you can see mouse trailing and text delay while typing.

30FPS for an interactive experience is really bad. And them saying some regions are locked to 20 FPS - holly shit that's a slideshow.

I used to game on budget PCs when I was a kid, I rarely got to play at 60 FPS, but going down to 30 was just "OK I'm not playing that".

Yes. After like 30 seconds it's barely noticeable unless the animation/physics are tied to the framerate. Some genres benefit from it but I'm not sure Zelda really needs it. Ocarina of Time ran at 20 FPS on N64, not in SOME demanding scenes, everywhere. And it's still a beloved, fantastic game.

I also regularly play games capped at 30 FPS because it greatly increases battery life in the Steam Deck in a lot of titles and not everything really needs it.

The problem with "SOME demanding scenes" is that inconsistent frametimes are much more noticeable and irritating than a lower, but consistent framerate.

BOTW feels bad in certain areas because rapidly switching from 30->20 causes noticeable stuttering. Even once it settles you're likely to be aware of animations and interactions behaving differently.

>Ocarina of Time ran at 20 FPS on N64, not in SOME demanding scenes, everywhere.

And I used to find a lot of old games immersive - but I can't play them nowdays.

Things don't exist in a vacuum and my experience is impacted by what other experiences I've had to compare it to. There's a threshold in graphics/voice acting/etc. that just makes the games I spent weeks on as a kid not interesting at all (even for the sake of nostalgia).

I used to work on 800x600 CRT monitor with 256 colors and today I get a headache when I have to work on a low pixel density cheap LCD.

> Have you played games at 30 and 60 FPS?

Yes, I make games as a hobby and have done both. I agree with the other commenter about fluctuation in framerate being a bad experience. If I make no changes beyond setting fps from 60 to 30, you can tell the difference in smooth scrolling, etc. However, a consistent 30fps can be just fine as an interactive experience with some thought put into it.

I see this kind of comment on Eurogamer all the time and don’t understand it. 60fps is so much better in every case. I can’t think of a single example of a game that isn’t materially improved as an experience by going from 30 to 60. The effect is far more striking than extra graphical effects. This isn’t cinema where 24fps looks “cinematic” - it’s just plain worse.

It’s 2023. No one is asking for 120fps as a mainstream baseline. 60 is such a sweet spot. It’s time for us to admit that 30 was a compromise for a certain console era that was defined by CPU limitation. If we don’t call bullshit, publishers will keep pumping this stuff out. Look at this week’s disastrous Redfall launch. 30fps on a 12tflop, 8-core Series X. Insanity.

A consistent 30FPS experience really isn't that bad in a lot of games. I'd much rather developers push game design with stuff like big open worlds and cool physics stuff like logs from the tree you just cut roll down the hill than a no risks locked 60 FPS static environment. Poor optimization like what is seen in Redfall or Pokemon Scarlet/Violet is an entirely different problem.

And we're talking about a game running on a 6 year old handheld! Not a CPU beast.

Yeah I’ve been playing TotK with my son all afternoon and I think they’ve done a great job with it - it looks and runs much better than BotW. Pretty remarkable technical achievement I reckon, given the well-known limitations of that machine.

But my point was about where we go from here, in 2023. I’d be disappointed if I couldn’t play this - or a remaster of this, or perhaps its sequel - at 60fps on a next-gen Switch successor, whenever that arrives.

I think there's two separate issues. The first which is your main complaint is the poor performance on modern systems of games. Totally agree, it's a combo of laziness, customer acceptance, and schedule/priorities that leads to it. I'm right with you on the frustration.

Tying into that is why I don't do a blanket 60fps in all cases, which is respecting the player's resources. If I was making a tetris clone, where the block falls at a set step every x milliseconds, all I'm doing is wasting their battery with double the frames.

For most people there is a threshold somewhere around 50 fps that is the distinction between choppy and smooth enough.

It's not the framerate itself that bothers me, it's when the framerate drops on demanding scenes. I'd rather have a consistent 30fps than a game constantly fluctuating between 30-60. But even a consistent 30fps is kinda a dream for the Switch, there's plenty of titles where it regularly dips down to 10fps.

Plus the other benefit to faster hardware is decreased loading times. The Switch has a lot of very long loading screens (and elaborate animations/cutscenes to mask background loading) and the PS5 with near instant loading very much increases the fun, because more time is spent playing vs waiting on a loading screen.