Experts Explain Why Overwatch On Switch Is Experiencing Performance Issues

Fans and players alike have had their hands on Overwatch for Nintendo Switch for a couple of weeks now. It has been one of the most highly anticipated games on the hybrid console. When Blizzard officially announced it, people just could not help but get excited.

Unfortunately, Overwatch for Switch is not really about giving a definitive experience. Sure, bringing the first-person shooter game to the console is worthy of praise, but the compromises Blizzard made are already starting to take their toll on the game. Now, the experts at Digital Foundry decided to take a closer look in order to give an explanation as to why the game is not really working on the console.

For starters, they found out that the developers at Blizzard actually stayed true to their promise in terms of the game’s performance. Overwatch for Switch runs at 900p while docked and at 720p as a portable. Apparently, though, it is more complicated than anyone could ever imagine.

“On closer inspection, there is much more to it,” Digital Foundry wrote, “with dynamic resolution scaling in play. It’s a dynamic 900p when docked, with a horizontal scaler delivering a minimum of 1152x900 under load. Similarly, portable play is a native 720p in the best case, but again, the horizontal scaler seems to deliver a 960x720 resolution with the engine under stress.”

Basically, there is some software magic happening in the background and it is responsible for juicing the visuals, bumping it up from a lower output. According to the experts, Blizzard did so in order to meet the target resolutions. Besides, this move is really expected for a device that runs on the same system that powers mobile phones. The only catch is that the studio decided to elect to target handheld resolutions as the main baseline, which is why the scaling resolutions are increased for televisions.

At the end of the day, Overwatch for Switch does not provide the same experience as other consoles and PC. Those run at 60 frames per second, while the game on the hybrid console is only capable of running at 30. That alone is enough for Overwatch to run at an uneven playing field. This should explain why Blizzard is not a fan of bringing a crossplay feature between Switch and other platforms.