Digital Foundry, a video gaming technology company, tested a variety of cloud-based games on the Nintendo Switch and wasn’t especially satisfied with the results. The team examined five games: Kingdom Hearts 3, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix, and Kingdom Hearts 2.5 Remix from Square Enix, Guardians of the Galaxy from Ubisoft, and Hitman 3 from IO Interactive.
Only a few Nintendo Switch games are fully cloud-based, meaning they are streamed to Nintendo’s device from a server thousands of miles away. It’s a way to allow games like Kingdom Hearts 3 or Control to operate on mobile devices, with capabilities like ray-tracing enabled in Control. Is the experience, however, sufficient? John and Tom from Digital Foundry tear apart latency, visual quality, and settings in this video, and the outcome is far from perfect.
Cloud gaming highlights
- Kingdom Hearts 3 is set to operate at 720p with an unlocked 60 frames per second. The video encoding here just can’t portray its detailed visual style and generous use of color — it appears terribly awful and compressed.
- There is no need to utilize the cloud with Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and 2.5 Remix since the games are so ancient and technically so simple. Switch should be able to handle them natively and at 60 frames per second. Surprisingly, the cloud versions operate at 720p30.
- Guardians of the Galaxy is a difficult game that can only be played in the cloud. Visually, though, it is out of place, and it runs at 720p30.
- Hitman 3 features two settings, however the improved graphics option isn’t totally evident. Both seem to work at different resolutions and at 30 frames per second.
- Every 30fps limit in every game tested had an erratic frame rate.
How do you feel about cloud gaming on Nintendo Switch?
