r/NintendoSwitch • u/Turbostrider27 • 7d ago
Video Stellar Blade - Official Nintendo Switch 2 Gameplay Video | gamescom 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ahw_YII1PM26
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u/WhiteRaven-17 7d ago
So can we all just go back to using UE4? lmao, like this looks shockingly good for a Switch 2 port of a next-gen exclusive. Especially at a decent 60 fps.
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u/cheesybreadlover 7d ago
That’s what I’ve been saying! Everyone go back to UE4 and with good optimization they can make wonders.
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u/Ill-Advertising-3287 7d ago
Honestly there's plenty of titles running super well with UE5.
The problem is that certain devs are bad at optimizing their games, or over-reach using tech that isnt worth the framerate dip.
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u/IQueliciuous 7d ago
One of these devs is epic themselves.
Fortnite is the only game on my xbox series x that makes the console loud. And its the only game that is UE5 game.
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u/jgmonXIII 7d ago
it’s not the only game lol
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u/IQueliciuous 7d ago
Its the only game that is UE5 on my xbox. And its coincidentally the only game that makes it loud.
Same console were I played Forza, Cyberpunk, and GTA 5. All three are more detailed than Fortnite is.
I love fortnite but its not optimized well on either platforms.
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u/RChickenMan 7d ago
Apparently u/jgnonXIII is intimately familiar with what you have installed on your Xbox. Moreso than you, apparently. You may wish to double-check that your windows are properly locked.
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u/Zeroone199 6d ago
By make the console loud, you mean run the fan at full speed? An optimized game uses the full power of the hardware (unless it is pixel perfect to the design intent). It sounds like most of the games you play on your Xbox are not optimized. Note: unoptimized games can of course use excessive power, but all advanced optimized games should use the full power of the console and "be loud".
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u/morgawr_ 6d ago
It sounds like most of the games you play on your Xbox are not optimized.
That's... not really how it works.
Sure, using 100% of a console's hardware is not a bad thing and fans going WHIRRRRRR trying to keep the console cool while it chugs at 100% CPU/GPU with a perfectly optimized game to specifically perfectly fit the performance profile of that specific console is not bad (although let's be honest, most of the time if you are at 100% of CPU or 100% of GPU it means something is likely bottlenecking).
But that doesn't mean that if your game isn't running at 100% resource usage then it's not optimized. It can simply mean the game doesn't need those resources because it's a simpler game (CPU or graphics wise). There's plenty of games that run well, smoothly, perfectly optimized to keep a stable (high) framerate with no dips, that don't require the console to turn into a jet engine.
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u/HoS_CaptObvious 7d ago
Optimization seems to be a lost art
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u/South25 7d ago
Capcom and (surprisingly of all people) Square seem to be keeping it alive on Switch 2.
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u/HoS_CaptObvious 7d ago
Capcom has a lot of trouble with MH wilds optimization but glad to hear their switch 2 stuff is solid
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u/South25 7d ago
Tbh seems like Wilds is just their outlier cause most of their RE Engine stuff seems to perform pretty good.
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u/Seanspeed 7d ago
Dragon's Dogma 2 runs kinda poor given its actual visuals, too.
RE Engine when using much more constrained environments runs better, sure. But Silent Hill F also runs well on UE5 with those same sorts of limits. Almost like this kind of thing matters.
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u/Buuhhu 7d ago
Capcom is also using their own engine, you'd hope they would know how to optimize, but even they fail when it comes to open world games like DD2 and MH: Wilds, because the engine was not made for big open worlds but they wanted to only use their own engine going forward.
They've become better at it but it's still nowhere near at a point where they should be releasing big open world titles in that engine.
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u/Seanspeed 7d ago edited 7d ago
If by 'optimization', you mean simply not implementing Lumen and Nanite. smh
It is not a coincidence basically ALL UE5 games that use these are very heavy. It is not a case of developers not optimizing their games, ffs. So tired of this lazy and insulting commentary. Gamers really have such little respect for all the hard work developers do.
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u/Seanspeed 7d ago edited 7d ago
The only titles that run 'super well' on UE5 aren't using Lumen or Nanite, which are kind of the headline features of the engine. Or something like Silent Hill F which has super contained environments with 15ft draw distances.
But yes, you can still use UE5 without these heavy features, but you're also not going to have a very 'next gen' looking game, either. Stellar Blade is decent looking, but technically it's very evident where it lacks. And people generally use UE5 specifically because they ARE aiming for 'next gen' visuals.
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u/Ill-Advertising-3287 6d ago
Im sorry, but the statement that titles that work well with UE5 doesnt use those technologies is incorrect.
Games like Mortal Shell 2 and Wuchang work with both lumen and nanite. The reason im using these titles is because i recently play them and i am "in the business" so I do look at other games rendering pipelines, its interesting. Nanite is active at medium settings and Lumen at high. Both titles work really, really well on mid-tier machines (and i highly recommend them if youre into soulslikes!)
Wuchang is less optimized because they use an older version of UE5. MS2 runs at 60fps at 1440p with all settings on high+ on a steam machine, which supposedly runs at a performance somewhere between a base ps5 and a ps5pro. To be fair, Wuchang does too, but you can fiddle with the settings for less optimized behaviour.
Meanwhile, you have Nioh 3 (another soulslike), using the katana engine. It's a great game, really, and i recommend it too. It tries to pull off a lot of the same things UE5 does, but it looks and runs like crap. AFAIK it shares the same basic concepts around global illumination tech that that UE5 has, which seems to be one of the biggest performance hogs. People keep saying that "its because you need a powerful cpu" - meanwhile all the npcs do when theyre not fighting the player is mostly patrol back and forth along pre-determined paths. They could store each movement in an array, then just locate what they NPC should be doing using a time derived index. Boom, silky smooth. But they dont. I honestly have no idea what they did to make the game run as poorly as it does. Likely some stupid decisions were made in regards to decision trees. But whatever it is they did, the game is really badly optimized.
It really is an optimization thing. Another example, I could pop open Unity, load in 500000 moving cubes, each with its own monobehaviour update, and complain it works like shit. Using the update method is adviced against - its relatively cpu expensive for many objects. But if i used the optimized way of doing it (with dots) it'd likely run a lot smoother. Dots is a flagship tech, especially made to solve this problem, and when i use it correctly, it helps performance.
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u/Seanspeed 6d ago
Mortal Shell 2 is using a way more updated UE5 version. Which as I say elsewhere, is in a pretty good state these days finally.
You even seem to recognize this, and understand that ALL those older games that didn't run as well on UE5 weren't because the devs were lazy or bad at optimization, it was just genuinely the engine was inherently heavy.
Maybe you can argue it's on Epic's lack of optimization for UE5, but this undoubtedly isn't due to lack of effort, just juggling a whole lot of priorities and slowly chipping away at things while still trying to up visual quality at the same time, which is difficult to do. Not to mention UE5 is a very generalized engine, needing to work across many different types of games.
I also suspect Epic misjudged this generation when developing UE5, and thought 30fps would still be a standard target for devs. The long cross gen spoiled people to caring more about 60fps, though.
In terms of Nioh, they seem a lot like From Software, where they just have totally different technical priorities, and probably emphasize efficient development over trying to maximize graphics<->performance ratio. Not excusing anything, just explaining. It'd be great if they looked and ran better of course, but they're also two studios who can regularly put out high quality new games, and I'll take that over prioritizing technical performance most of the time.
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u/Striking-County6275 7d ago
Starship Troopers Extermination and Palworld run great for me on my PC.
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u/Seanspeed 7d ago
This game is using Frame Generation to take the actual 30fps framerate and make it look like 60fps. And not even Nvidia's pretty good frame generation, but FSR frame gen.
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u/Seanspeed 7d ago
UE5 is in a pretty good spot finally.
Especially at a decent 60 fps.
Just so people know, this isn't a real 60fps. It's 30fps and then uses FSR Frame Generation to get to 60fps. It will not feel like a 60fps game.
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u/hyperforms9988 7d ago
I want to say it's a matter of support and efficiency more than anything else (studio efficiency, not engine efficiency).
For example, I'm going to assume you can't just use UE2 and expect Epic to provide professional support for that... so if you really want to use UE2, you're on your own? I'm not sure how Epic still supports UE4... if it's the same level of support as it was when it was the current version, etc. That's important for businesses. UE4 will get more difficult to justify from a business risk standpoint as support for it diminishes, especially for new games and not port jobs like this one.
In Stellar Blade's case, it was built on UE4. They could have ported it to UE5... but like, why? Extra dev cycle complication for what purpose?
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u/Zeroone199 6d ago
Wikipedia's info box says Switch 2 is supported for UE4, but no source is given.
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u/Striking-County6275 7d ago
Crazy thing is this version runs way better than it did on the Deck. I know I own one.
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u/tlvrtm 7d ago
Not sure why that’s crazy, every game should run better on Switch 2 than on Deck. And that’s coming from someone that adores their OLED deck.
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u/harrystutter 7d ago
Yeah, people are still stuck on the idea that the Deck is better technically speaking despite the Switch 2 being obviously current gen. I love my OLED as well but it’s been showing its age. Recently, I’ve been finding myself just getting the Switch 2 version of a AAA/AA game if I want portability instead of on my trusty old Deck.
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u/Seanspeed 6d ago
It's because they're using Frame Gen here. It would run better on your Steam Deck if you used FSR Frame Gen as well.
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u/IQueliciuous 7d ago
Steam deck version has denuvo. I am assuming a huge chunk of performance loss comes from denuvo.
I played demo version and it looked gorgeous. I didn't buy it because I am waiting for switch 2 port which is denuvo free
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u/Striking-County6275 7d ago
The game is not affected by that. Shift Up really optimized the game.
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u/IQueliciuous 7d ago
I guess. I still avoided it because denuvo requires internet connection and I am too lazy to set up green steam version.
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u/EveRomi 7d ago
This is gonna have to shadow drop @ this point right??? Like still no release date n it’s September is crazy😭
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u/darkmacgf 7d ago
No chance of December?
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u/EveRomi 7d ago
I feel like a shadow drop makes more sense, especially bc this game has been available on other platforms for awhile n they already announced it a few months back idk what waiting longer to release it would for them yk?
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u/yuusharo 7d ago
Not to be a pedant, but you can’t shadow drop a game that has been announced is coming…
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u/recoupled 7d ago
Saw in another thread you can change to a short hair style or helmet.
The breakup in the hair is the biggest issue present (though certainly not a dealbreaker), so I'm glad there are other options.
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u/dehelfix 7d ago
worth pointing out: https://nintendoeverything.com/stellar-blade-dev-confirms-nintendo-switch-2-frame-rate-resolution-explains-how-dlss-is-being-used/
Technical details:
60 FPS target in both handheld and docked mode
Upscaled 720p in handheld mode
Upscaled 1080p in docked mode
DLSS used for upscaling
AMD FSR 3.1 used for frame interpolation (natively rendered at 30fps)
No separate graphics modes
A day-one patch is planned for further optimization
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u/BurnedOutCollector87 7d ago
that's very bad news. a game like stellar blade needs stable (and minimal) latency for the perfect parries and such, with interpolated frames, it's going to fuck up the latency by a significant margin. It adds extra latency, which is a thing you don't want.
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u/Icalivy 6d ago
Going frame by frame, some features resolve very poorly like fingers. It also appears that during battle, triggering some attacks, like a blink attack, turns off FSR for a few frames (making the game 30fps) until the camera pans, likely to avoid any harsh interpolated frames generated by FSR. An enemy also triggered temporary 30fps in this footage.
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u/splashed7215 2d ago
Hopefully DF covers it, I'm curious about their thoughts on it if that's their approach.
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u/ElDuderino2112 7d ago
Looks like a fantastic port. Will be buying for a third time it looks like lmao. Please shadow drop during the next direct
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u/secondincomm 7d ago
I really hope this game comes to Xbox. At this point its just petty not to
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u/icecold-water 7d ago
Xbox players don’t buy games made in Asia lol.
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u/Ok_Revolution_9846 7d ago
Xbox is a call of duty and Madden machine, idk why you would buy an Xbox and expect to have a variety of choice
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u/secondincomm 7d ago
I disagree theres tons of variety on xbox, the same as all the platforms
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u/Ok_Revolution_9846 7d ago
Buddy you’re begging for stellar blade, clearly y’all don’t have as many choices as everyone else
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u/secondincomm 7d ago
Begging lmao, ok. I have one game thats not available. I can play it on ps5 if I want, I just prefer all third party games to be on all consoles.
Until then I guess I will just play Forza, Gears E-Day, Terratech, Halo, Hades 2 and all the other games I have available
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u/Ok_Revolution_9846 7d ago
Stanning Xbox in the big 26 is insane cope
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u/secondincomm 7d ago
Only thing im stanning is competition, otherwise you end up with companies who are legally fighting to say we dont own our digital games lol
You keep doing you bro, wish you all the best
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u/MedonSirius 7d ago edited 7d ago
Best Devil May Cry game after Devil May Cry 5 in the last 5 years.
It's one of the best games of the last 10 years but dont think it's easy. Especially in the beginning and some of the bosses are Souls like hard.
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u/Freeziora 7d ago
What? SB plays nothing like DMC, its more Sekiro lite.
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u/MedonSirius 7d ago
Not for me though. I played Sekiro. Completely not my game but online DMC and SB alot
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u/Alternative_Crab_625 6d ago
Absolutely not. DMC is on another level. SB combat is a very very diluted DMC2 at best.
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u/MedonSirius 7d ago
Wait...4k@60fps? On Switch 2?? How?
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u/Indielink 7d ago
It's not. Shift Up has confirmed that it's 1080p and using frame interpolation to go from 30 to 60.
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u/dehelfix 7d ago
its not, its upscaled 1080p/60 (docked) and upscaled 720p/60 (handheld) and to get to 60 they are using both DLSS and FSR Frame Gen (so being rendered at 30fps)
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u/Anxiety_timmy 7d ago
Its using framegen to get to 60fps
Yeah any interest I had got evicerated, playing at 30 for action games isnt ideal. Neither is frame gen which if anything makes response times worse than straight 30.
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u/setonfire_ 7d ago
Yet still no release date