Fans have taken to the likes of X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok to question NetherRealm's decision to market Mortal Kombat 1 as a $70 Switch release. It has been called "robbery" and "disrespectful" to users.
Realistically it’s entirely possible it took more platform specific work to make the switch version viable than anything else.
It’s possible, but that’s wild speculation, and I think pretty unlikely.
It’s not their fault it’s lesser hardware.
It’s their fault for releasing a 70$ 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.
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.
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).
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.
I spent like 15 minutes looking up and comparing the minimum requirements on PC for mortal Kombat 1 (a game I have no intention of ever playing) and the CPU and GPU of the switch, pointing out that the GPU and CPU of the switch are both so far below even the minimum requirements on PC (which are pretty low tbh)
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.
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.
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
Right which is why first-party titles, which are built for the stupidly underpowered hardware found in a switch, run and look pretty damn good for the hardware inside. They are building the entire game around a singular shitty-ass chip. It can be optimized perfectly for just that.
But a developer creating a game for PC, Xbox, Playstation, potentially other platforms, AND Switch isn’t going to change the design of the entire game to accommodate the Switch’s dinky-ass hardware.
And yes old consoles and games used clever tricks to run well on slower hardware and it was amazing. But I guarantee that every single title you could think of as an example was either a first-party title, or in the case of something like Crash Bandicoot, was exclusive to that console.
You’re delusional if you think that third-party devs should be able to meet Nintendo’s level of polish on their console while creating graphically demanding games for current gen.
And yes it makes sense to be angry at “one of the greatest game consoles ever made” (okay fanboy) when that console was underpowered when it launched 6 years ago, has TERRIBLE controllers (joy cons are literally the least enjoyable controllers I’ve used, ever, and have serious drift issues), and has held back game development and caused headaches like the situation at hand for devs - they’re essentially in a no-win situation here.
Who's angry? It's not game developer's fault that it has 10% of the power needed to run a modern game.
There is no amount of optimization that could make most modern games run on the switch. It has nothing to do with laziness. If you were a first party making games built from the ground up to be comparable to other modern games, it could not be done.
There's a reason Nintendo leans hard into simple physics and extremely arcade style sports games, and it's not just to be more accessible to casual fans. It's because it's literally all the hardware can do.
There’s a reason Nintendo leans hard into simple physics and extremely arcade style sports games, and it’s not just to be more accessible to casual fans. It’s because it’s literally all the hardware can do.
Yeah when they chose the type of games they’d be known for in the 80’s, it sure was specifically because their crystal ball told them:
They chose that hardware because Nvidia was offloading it dirt cheap, so they could make big margins on it.
Yeah when they chose the type of games they’d be known for in the 80’s, it sure was specifically because their crystal ball told them
Nintendo’s shift towards simpler games has absolutely coincided with their consoles being less powerful than the competition. And since we’re name-calling like children (bc some of us are fanboys who can’t accept valid criticism)… this has been apparent for the last 20 years, and I made the observation as a child during the Wii era, numbskull!
Nintendo is currently not known for their 80s catalog of titles beyond generally being associated with Mario and Co. - they are known for the games and systems that most people grew up with - and statistically, that’s overwhelmingly Wii/DS and newer.
During which time their hardware has consistently lagged behind other systems, and rather than focus on graphics, like Nintendo once did - when they were pushing the hardware envelope - with titles like Super Mario 64, Nintendo has shifted focus and decided to use commodity hardware for their consoles.
Now, as a shift in strategy, I’m not saying it’s necessarily wrong, but don’t try and deny what’s going on.
They absolutely chose the hardware for the switch because it was cheap. There isn’t anything particularly special about that Nvidia chip, it had been commercially available for two years by the time the switch came out, so yes it’s reasonable to assume Nvidia was offloading it cheaply.
Use your brain and maybe put away the Nintendo kneepads.
Yeah, the physics on botw and totk are so simple. It hurts my brain how basic those games are.
Two of the highest rated games of all time.
On switch
The most underpowered console of our generation.
But yeah mortal kombat couldn’t make the game look even slightly better because it can only be as good at totk. That really basic shitty looking extremely popular and highly rated game.
Yeah, the physics on botw and totk are so simple. It hurts my brain how basic those games are.
Half Life 2 had physics like that 20 years ago.
Also totk is a stuttering mess when anything sufficiently complex happens unless you overclock the switch, which just proves the point of how underpowered the switch is.
Also also, art style CARRIES those games’ graphics. Running those games at higher res (or just on a TV) really shows the constraints they had to work within to get the games to run.
Two of the highest rated games of all time.
Yeah, and I’m sure the loyal Zelda/Nintendo fanboys have nothing to do with that.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re fantastic games, but I don’t think they’d be nearly as popular/well-received if they weren’t Zelda titles.
If you need an example in the opposite direction, I don’t even need to look up which Pokemon game it was that looked like dogshit on the switch bc you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Your claim about half life 2 is bold and would need backing up. Im not going to just accept your assertion without proof. That’s not how this works.
Totk has some frame rate issues here and there, but when you give playes the power to do whatever they want with a set of tools, you will always overload a game engine. Name any sandbox game that players haven’t been able to overload and cause frame rate drops.
Also, there are AAA games that struggle with frame rate drops on PC, PS5, and Xbox series X. Which i guess just proves the point of how underpowered those are… obviously, the switch is the lower end of these. Im not deluded. But claiming some stuttering in totk when players have set up chaos means it proves the switch is underpowered is just incorrect. Any game that gives you a set of tools and the instructions ,“go” stutters when there’s too much going on.
The switch is 6 years old, im not suprisdd its showing its age now. I am suprised its remained relevant and has games that are rated to highly.
So art style carries the games? So what? Isn’t that just ingenuity? And dorsnt it prove the .ain point of this thread? That Mortal Kombat could have looked good with a tweaked art style for switch but was just a bad port? If the product looks bad on the switch, then dont release it on Switch, i guess.
Ok, but if there are zelda/nintendo fan boys it follows that nintendo are consistently making great games and that zelda games are consistently great… you dont keep enough people gushing over your games by releasing trash game after trash game. Also fan boys wouldnt be enough alone to get a game that highly rated. Remeber that this game only released on switch, meaning it didnt have all the pa5 and xbox owners to help boost its numbers.
So whilst im sure the fanboys had something to do with it, its likely that the fact that the game is good played a kuch bigger part.
People bought a switch when these games came out just because they saw how good they were and wanted to play…
Sorry i think i know what you mean but i dont play the pokemon games. Is it the one with the shit textures, was it online like an mmo, i seem to recall one like that. Didnt interest me because it looked shit compared to so many other games ive played on switch.
lmfao have you never heard of the source engine? Garry’s mod? HL2 was just the first game running Source that really showed some of the physics and creativity off.
While the physics on totk are cool, and the crafting system is impressive, especially for the hardware it’s running on, nothing it does is exactly revolutionary. Plenty of games have been doing similar stuff for a very long time, on much older hardware.
Not exactly the same, and they certainly deserve credit bc what totk has is impressive, but acting like totk was some revolution in videogame physic and one of the best games ever is a bit of a stretch IMO. It’s a fun, well-made, complete open-world game, that builds on the previous title’s map.
Also, there are AAA games that struggle with frame rate drops on PC, PS5, and Xbox series X
Yeah but their stuttering is dropping from 60FPS to 50FPS, or 180FPS to 100FPS, and because they’ve got actually capable hardware, they also support freesync, which greatly reduces how jarring FPS drops feel.
But claiming some stuttering in totk when players have set up chaos means it proves the switch is underpowered is just incorrect
Any game that can barely run at 30FPS (totk relies heavily on dynamic resolution scaling in denser areas, even without player contraptions) and drops to 20FPS when loaded with stuff built in game is a stuttering mess. Be it on PC, Xbox or Switch. Switch doesn’t get a break on a game being a stuttering mess because it’s weak.
That’s literally the whole reason ppl are criticizing the switch. It makes games like totk a stuttering mess, instead of allowing people to enjoy incredible games like that at a nice smooth 60 or 90FPS
My two-year-old phone can run games at beyond 1440P, 120FPS, with better graphics than a Switch.
Any game that gives you a set of tools and the instructions ,“go” stutters when there’s too much going on.
Yes every game is gonna have a limit to the physics it can crunch. TOTK’s limit before stuttering is pretty damn small, relatively speaking.
And dorsnt it prove the .ain point of this thread? That Mortal Kombat could have looked good with a tweaked art style for switch but was just a bad port?
No. Because that would have required the devs to literally create new textures for every single asset in the game, with new art style, which especially in a game that people are often very competitive in can cause massive headaches for the devs.
Ok, but if there are zelda/nintendo fan boys it follows that nintendo are consistently making great games
Andrew Tate is a good person bc he has a lot of fanboys, right? If that logic doesn’t follow, why would it follow for videogames? Fanboys are known for irrational support, not rational criticism.
fan boys wouldnt be enough alone to get a game that highly rated.
Remeber that this game only released on switch, meaning it didnt have all the pa5 and xbox owners to help boost its numbers.
Wow, REALLY?? Nintendo didn’t release Zelda on Xbox??? 🤪
So whilst im sure the fanboys had something to do with it, its likely that the fact that the game is good played a kuch bigger part.
I never said it wasn’t a good game. It’s a great game. Not my speed, but it’s great. I don’t think it’s anywhere close to top 10 tho, and the only reason it’s even in that discussion is because of fanboys who are okay with Zelda becoming just another open-world RPG with towers to climb and now crafting shit.
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
Right… I’m not sure what your point is exactly with that, doom came out in 1993 and had extremely low requirements and looks as dated as it is. Of course it can run on machines like fridges or ATMs or calculators in more recently made devices because the power of the chips in these machines are better then PCs back when doom released.
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.
Isn’t a PS5 vs Switch comparison kind of like a PS4 vs Wii comparison? They’re not even the same hardware generation, it’s a wonder they’re even dedicating resources to this.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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
Seriously, it’s a product for sale. Don’t like the price, vote with your wallet and don’t buy it. What’s with the manufactured outrage for every topic nowadays
Its not an old game, MK1 is the latest release. The people getting served this are running it on hardware that was weak last generation. At a certain point you simply cannot push these devices any further. MK1 for Switch was never going to look beautiful, the current gen Switch can’t do it. I’m okay with devs making their games available, I mean at least you can play it. Theres a reason a Switch 2 is in the works.
Because you have the full choice to not buy and support it, if you think the price is unreasonable. It’s not a vital need, and nobody’s forcing customers to buy it. Housing, food, healthcare, we don’t have a choice. Buy or die. A video game? Not so much. The issue is not game publishers overcharging, it’s players who moan and whine… AND THEN BUY IT ANYWAY, thus ensuring the publishers will continue the practice
Others have already replied with this info but I’m just spelling it out for anyone who is not familiar like me:
They fucking named the brand new game mk1. Is it a remaster? No. It’s not a remaster. Is it a recreation of mk1? No. It’s an alternate timeline game given the worst name in the history of naming things. It’s genuinely a brand new game.
Sometimes I wish I could have a job where companies just say “hey should we make this decision” and I tell them “that’s so fucking stupid no one will actually like that” and get paid well for it.
I've had some similar roles before, but more often than not companies just do it anyway, even if you have a lot of data to the contrary. It's stupidly easy for someone in management to push some of this through despite the data, choose an arbitrary metric to define their success, get their bonus, and then bail for another company. Meanwhile, folks left at the company have to then try and fix all of the nonsense. It blows that we value failing forward. I've seen a few decent products just tanked this way.
Which is bullshit. It reminds me of when web email services offered ridiculously small inbox sizes, such as 25MB or 50MB. Then in came Google and offered 1GB, and all of a sudden all those companies found the way to match Google’s offering.
But I guess if people are willing to pay for those ridiculous prices, and deal with in-game payments… shrug.
People are complaining because they don’t like a thing, that’s fine. Same as you’re complaining in this post. Call companies out on their bullshit. Also don’t buy bullshit, that’s a good point too.
Because it doesn’t qualify as bullshit. Company made a product, set a price. Either you find it worth the price or not, but either way what’s the reason to kick up a fuss over an optional good
Company also sold pre-orders for a product, which means people can’t really decide whether the product is exactly what they want until they get it. At which point they complain, because they trusted the company not to sell a sub-par product. What is your issue?
My guy, the complaint is about the price because of the quality. Or, as you are asking, are you saying people didn’t know the price when they bought it?
On a side note, preorders are a scam. If you’re dumb enough to preorder a game in unlimited supply, that’s on you.
I agree that pre-orders are a scam, but it’s shitty to say “you knew what you bought!” when some people literally couldn’t.
I’m not saying they knew what they bought, I’m saying it’s on them for choosing to buy before they knew what they were buying. Seriously, people need to take responsibility for their choices already.
Company made a product, set a price. Either you find it worth the price or not, but either way what’s the reason to kick up a fuss over an optional good
Now you’re saying it’s on people who pre-order. Can’t we stop pushing this on the consumer and start demanding better from the manufacturers? Why can they sell shitty products, instead of being held to higher standards?
In this particular case, it’s not on the publisher. The switch is an old console, and there’s only so much they can do with the hardware. It’s not a particularly big surprise to anybody familiar with the technology.
Why SHOULDN’T we hold consumers to task for their bad decisions? They are arguably making things worse for the rest of us, by repeatedly rewarding bad behaviour from companies. There is no good reason for them to preorder, they just had to be the first instead of waiting a day for reviews to appear. Well, if you’re going to be impatient, guess what? The risk is on you.
In this particular case, it’s not on the publisher. The switch is an old console, and there’s only so much they can do with the hardware. It’s not a particularly big surprise to anybody familiar with the technology.
Then they should be open about this before and during release.
Why SHOULDN’T we hold consumers to task for their bad decisions?
Because it doesn’t work. One side of the equation spends lots of money to make sure as many consumers as possible make bad decisions, because it makes them even more money. You can’t fix this only by changing the other side.
I didn’t suggest fixing it. I said the consumers consciously made a bad decision, and they should take responsibility for it. I’m tired of grown ups acting like kids.
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).
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
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.
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