Fans have taken to the likes of X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok to question NetherRealm’s decision to market Mortal Kombat 1 as a $70 Switch release. It has been called “robbery” and “disrespectful” to users.
Realistically it’s entirely possible it took more platform specific work to make the switch version viable than anything else.
It’s not their fault it’s lesser hardware.
Realistically it’s entirely possible it took more platform specific work to make the switch version viable than anything else.
It’s possible, but that’s wild speculation, and I think pretty unlikely.
It’s not their fault it’s lesser hardware.
It’s their fault for releasing a 70$ game on “lesser hardware” while not spending the time to get it working and looking well-enough. They didn’t have to release it.
It’s not wild speculation. The CPU is 20 tiers worse than dogshit and getting anything that’s even a hint of demanding to even function at all on it is a lot of work.
that’s why most games choose not to release on it. this is still a greedy decision.
The game doesn’t cost them less and probably costs them more. Discounting it because the hardware is bad is not fair, rational, or reasonable.
the point isn’t that it should cost less, it’s that it shouldn’t have been released to begin with AND it costs more than most games. the price isn’t really the problem, it just compounds on it to make it all seem worse.
So they’d rather not have the option of running the game on their bad hardware?
Why not just not buy it?
Believe me that’s going to happen too. But it was still a mistake to release it on Switch if they couldn’t be arsed.
And yet Nintendo releases plenty of games on it that work fine
What’s your point? It’s absolutely possible to make fun games that are simple and not demanding.
It’s also extremely limiting. The vast majority of recent games can’t possibly be made to run on anything anywhere close to as underpowered as the Switch.
I am just annoyed when people say the switch hardware is shit. It’s not shit, it’s just a completely different approach, that’s all. Also it’s annoying you’re using one of the shittiest ports ever to push this idea. They could have built this game from the ground up for switch and had something that looked and ran good. But that wasn’t their plan. The plan was a half assed port.
But it actually is obscenely underpowered, even for mobile, and the CPU is a massive limitation that keeps the vast majority of last gen games from being possible.
It changed the space by showing low end open world games on handheld were possible, but it hit its ceiling extremely quickly. There’s a reason most AAA games didn’t support it, and it’s because it isn’t capable.
Yeah I am a switch owner and also play on my Mac and on Windows with virtual machines, and the majority of switch ports are just garbage and should not have been released. I paid for the outer worlds on switch and it was awful, just a loading screen simulator.
I have a PC, PS5, and Switch, and never felt like the Switch was underpowered. Samewise, my phone doesn’t feel underpowered compared to my laptop, because I recognise they’re completely different devices.
You don’t get a Switch to play the latest God of War, you get it to play Mario and Zelda games, and cute lo-fi indie games
Yes in a world that expects hardware to always get better and software to always be written sloppily and/or assuming those constant improvements I guess it makes sense to be angry at one of the greatest game consoles ever created
Remember when games used a few KB of memory and they did smart things to make that work? No you probably don’t because you’d be angered by that hardware’s existence
No, it is wild speculation. Turning off graphical effects etc. until you get acceptable frame rates isn’t hard and doesn’t take long, definitely not as long as implementing them for the other consoles.
You don’t need to rebuild the game because the CPU is slower.
Graphical effects have never been the problem. They’re completely irrelevant and not even sort of part of the discussion.
CPU performance is exactly the entire problem, and yes, you absolutely do have to make fundamental changes to make it functional. The CPU is the reason the majority of last gen games are straight up impossible to port in any context, and current gen games are much worse.
Graphical effects have never been the problem. They’re completely irrelevant and not even sort of part of the discussion.
What? This whole topic is about the lower quality of MK1 on the switch. How is the CPU involved in the graphics of MK1? You’ll need to share a source that this is the problem.
CPU performance is exactly the entire problem, and yes, you absolutely do have to make fundamental changes to make it functional. The CPU is the reason the majority of last gen games are straight up impossible to port in any context, and current gen games are much worse.
Please share a source, or at least a detailed description of what exactly the CPU is too slow for to run MK1 with higher quality. It sure as hell isn’t involved in shader execution, which is where most of the graphical fidelity comes from (if you’re developing a game post 2000).
Am not an expert but i think particles and physics are both calculated by the CPU. Both very intensive tasks. Graphic wise, from looking at the screenshot above, it seems they only lowered the quality of model and it looks awful because they went for realism. The not so easy fixable problem is the characters design, Switch games look cartoonish for a reason.
Physics are calculated by the CPU, but a game like MK1 doesn’t have many physics to calculate - almost everything is pre-made animations. Particles are updated by the CPU, but rendered by the GPU.
And yeah, that’s why my point was that it’s not the CPU that is limiting the graphics.
The lower graphics quality is because the GPU can’t do math. There’s no way to mitigate that.
It’s also absolutely none of the work involved in a port. The work on a port is entirely making the actual mechanics function on a CPU that was terrible for mobile years before the switch launched.
The lower graphics quality is because the GPU can’t do math. There’s no way to mitigate that.
Yes, which is why the CPU isn’t the problem. It’s the GPU.
It’s also absolutely none of the work involved in a port. The work on a port is entirely making the actual mechanics function on a CPU that was terrible for mobile years before the switch launched.
Please share a source for this. A game like MK1 doesn’t need a lot of CPU power, because there just isn’t anything complicated happening. It’s all GPU that’s missing.
Yeah I looked and idk what to say - it looks like a switch game.
If you bought a switch, which was an extremely underpowered when it was released 6 years ago, and then get upset when AAA games releasing on current gen consoles look like dogshit… You have nobody to blame but yourself.
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It doesn’t look like a hardware issue. Yes, the less powerful hardware is what forced graphical changes, but it looks like an art direction problem.
The changes mostly fail to capture the essence of the original design. The characters look like they were ripped from the SIMs.
No one is expecting the same lighting, textures, or poly counts, but they do expect something that looks like Mortal Combat. That isn’t an unreasonable expectation.
You’re right that this may be a budgeting issue of sorts, but if they can’t set aside enough resources to make it look like some sort of Mortal Combat game, then maybe they shouldn’t have made the port.
If you’re buying this (or anything other than Nintendo exclusive games) for your switch, it’s because you don’t have any other options and likely only own a switch
If you had a PC or a PS5, you’d buy it on that.
So switch only owners would pay whatever for it, but the rest of us wouldnt
I mean, not necessarily - they might be buying it on the switch because they want a “mobile” version and don’t own a steam deck.
But yeah, ultimately if you own a switch, you should know what to expect by now from anything that isn’t a first party Nintendo title (and even then it can be a bit hit or miss from a performance standpoint)
I admit I haven’t really touched my switch much since I got a Steam Deck.
Sounds like they should accept their inferior switch version, or invest in better hardware.
Given that the switch version looks terrible even by Switch standard, I think they’re right to complain and refuse to buy it. And not everyone can just “invest in better hardware” the second an upgrade comes along. Let’s not forget that up until the Steam Deck, the switch was the gold standard for handheld gaming - mainly by virtue of being the only real option
Not always true; some games work really well on handheld/portable devices and the Switch is really good for that. The Binding of Isaac springs to mind.
I own a ton of games on my switch that aren’t switch exclusives. I travel a lot and use it like a Gameboy on planes, in hotels etc. Anyone using a switch entirely as a home console experience, ya silly to not buy games on PC etc instead.
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What a horrendous website.
It probably cost more in development to port the game to Switch than any other console. Graphics quality is irrelevant when users willingly buy a device with worse hardware than consoles. This seems like a case of “fans” wanting to eat their cake and have it too.
But it also puts it closer to the mobile market than console, especially given that the switch essentially has a mobile soc
You’re one of the first people I’ve seen use the cake metaphor correctly.
For the quality offered the cost was very steep, but its also true the Switch doing some major heavy lifting already.
What does that mean, the Switch doing some major heavy lifting?
The hardware the game is running is painfully terrible in 2023.
While the OP meant it the way he answered you, the way I see it used most often colloquially is that when someone or something does the heavy lifting especially in gaming, they are providing the bulk of the work. Like doing the heavy lifting in a team game equates to carrying the team, or saying a character does the heavy lifting instead of the player, means the character is overpowered and carrying the player (or vice versa).
Well that makes sense. The switch is a less powerful platform, an intentional trade off for the mobility. And at this point, it’s on the older side. Either accept the trade off so you can play on an airplane or buy a more powerful modern device like a steam deck.
I’ve seen phone games look better
I’ve seen Switch games that look better.
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To all people who buy switch and say it’s not about the graphics, it’s about the experience, this is what you get.
I’m not criticizing them saying this , I’m just making a point that switch as inferior hardware and you can’t expect to have the game with the same graphics as ps5. The game price is not tied to the graphics, it’s tired to the amount of work they had to put in it, which I’m sure is a lot
Experience expensive
Do people not realize that some, if not all store fronts have a clause that the base price of a game has to be the same on other storefronts.
I know its true for steam vs other pc store fronts, but i believe its probably true for consoles as well.
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Inb4 the “omg this is so entitled I swear I mean you guys are sending us DEATH THREATS I have PROOF that DEATH THREATS were sent to the developers (by our firm’s sockpuppet accounts) and that is so uncool stop being so ENTITLED” PR statement
Ah, the Disney defence. “Everyone who dislikes our movie is a racist/misogynist.”
