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Nier Automata releasing on Switch just further disappoints me about Kingdom Hearts being cloud only on Switch.

criteriondog

criteriondog

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Oct 26, 2017
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Especially after Sora getting into Smash, and the Kingdom Hearts community being vocal for the series to come to Switch for a long time! And it isn't that the Switch can't run Kingdom Hearts, (even if they're remasters, let alone originally ps3 remasters, and at heart PS2 titles and a PSP game), Square is releasing a PS4 title on Switch, and it isn't a cloud version at all.

I get it, there would be compromises to Kingdom Hearts running natively on Switch. It wouldn't look as hot as the PS4 games, but those compromises would be better than cloud only versions. And it's even more humiliating when Square is releasing Nier Automata for Switch (lower res and frame rate, but still!), but didn't offer a native version of Kingdom Hearts on Switch, especially after Sora's arrival in Smash?

What happened? Lack of time, resources, budget? It's a shame too. I'm not super crazy on the series but my buddy just got a Switch and always wanted to try the series a week ago and asked if he could get them on Switch, and I advised him they were cloud and to look elsewhere. :/

After today's Nier announcement, it just seems ridiculous that the games weren't considered more for their switch release.

On the bright side, Harvestella from Square looks awesome.
 
PlanetSmasher

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I honestly think that it all just comes down to Nomura not wanting just ONE game in the KH series to be cloud-based, so all of the older games had to suffer by extension due to the Switch being unable to run KH3 natively.

That being said, Automata already ran pretty badly on PS4/XB1, so I imagine the Switch port is gonna be pretty rough.
 
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criteriondog

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PlanetSmasher said:
I honestly think that it all just comes down to Nomura not wanting just ONE game in the KH series to be cloud-based, so all of the older games had to suffer by extension due to the Switch being unable to run KH3 natively.

That being said, Automata already ran pretty badly on PS4/XB1, so I imagine the Switch port is gonna be pretty rough.
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Even with KH 3, I think it could run on Switch scaled down. I don't think it would be impossible. Lower effects, res, frame rate, like we've seen it with Doom Eternal, Witcher 3, etc.

This decision is just baffling. :/
 
cowbanana

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I mean, they made the PC versions exclusive to EGS. I just don't think SE gives a fuck. They're more interested in ??? than serving the wants of their customers. Very, very likely throwing money away in the process of alienating as many people as possible.

Disclaimer: I don't personally care one bit about Kingdom Hearts.
 
Alvis

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Between the PC versions being EGS exclusive and the Switch versions being cloud only, it's as if Square-Enix was actively looking for a way to ensure that they sell zero copies of the ports.
 
vestan

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I think it's a combination of SE crunching the numbers and coming to the realization that the amount of $ they'd make bringing it over to the Switch wouldn't offset potential port costs (I highly doubt this but I'm not a businessman/analyst so...) + wanting to have something to release around the time Sora was added to Smash. Cloud versions let them solve these two issues in one fell swoop.

I don't think hardware is an issue at all. It's clear they can do something special with the system given the time and want to do so, just look at DQXI S. I get HD 2.8 and III not having any native ports but HD 1.5 + HD 2.5 ReMIX seem like such a slam dunk, it's just odd.
 
HOUSEJoseph

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Oct 27, 2017
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Any game on PS4, and I mean, ANY game, can run natively on Switch, if the effort is out in. People said the same thing with Persona 5 for some reason.

Dial down the resolution and frame rate, turn off some graphical effects, use FSR, and it will work well.
 
Abrasion Test

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cowbanana said:
I mean, they made the PC versions exclusive to EGS. I just don't think SE gives a fuck. They're more interested in ??? than serving the wants of their customers. Very, very likely throwing money away in the process of alienating as many people as possible.

Disclaimer: I don't personally care one bit about Kingdom Hearts.
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Yup. I mean they can't even be assed to publish their HD2D games in North America, every FF game is exclusive to PS for several years, titles get stuck on the Epic Store (in the case of KH, seemingly forever), etc. They occasionally make good games but consistently show there is no rhyme or reason in distributing their games and they won't get out of bed unless first parties pay up. They try to assume as little risk as humanly possible and only think of short term gains rather than building a brand and an audience.

This is not a sensible company so applying logic to their ways doesn't work.
 
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ILikeFeet

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vestan said:
I think it's a combination of SE crunching the numbers and coming to the realization that the amount of $ they'd make bringing it over to the Switch wouldn't offset potential port costs (I highly doubt this but I'm not a businessman/analyst so...) + wanting to have something to release around the time Sora was added to Smash. Cloud versions let them solve these two issues in one fell swoop.

I can understand HD 2.8 and III not having any native ports but HD 1.5 + HD 2.5 ReMIX seem like such a slam dunk, it's just odd.
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KH would have vastly outsold Nier on switch
 
Viale

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criteriondog said:
Even with KH 3, I think it could run on Switch scaled down. I don't think it would be impossible. Lower effects, res, frame rate, like we've seen it with Doom Eternal, Witcher 3, etc.

This decision is just baffling. :/
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Most games can run on switch, the issue comes in whether or not companies want to go through the extra effort of properly porting or not.

Square enix didn't for some stupid reason.

Even then though, I'd rather some effort was taken to port the games not kH3' rather than just dumping everything on the cloud.
 
PlanetSmasher

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HOUSEJoseph said:
Any game on PS4, and I mean, ANY game, can run natively on Switch, if the effort is out in. People said the same thing with Persona 5 for some reason.

Dial down the resolution and frame rate, turn off some graphical effects, use FSR, and it will work well.
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A Kingdom Hearts game with a crappy frame rate would likely be nearly unplayable at higher difficulties. I'm not sure "turn down the frame rate" is a reasonable solution.

Like, KH1/2/BBS/DDD could all easily run on Switch, but you would have to compromise a lot to get KH3 running on Switch and I don't think Nomura thought it was worth it.
 
vestan

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ILikeFeet said:
KH would have vastly outsold Nier on switch
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Oh yeah for sure, but there's probably something going on behind the scenes we're not privy to that has Square-Enix not too interested in bringing the games to the Switch and Xbox (physical) for that matter. Epic directly assisting Square with the PC ports + covering the costs of their development in exchange for exclusivity rights to the tune of $250m is practically zero risk on their end which makes it worth going for.

Maybe they saw MoM Switch sales numbers after sending it out to die and in typical publisher fashion concluded that there's no real fervor or enthusiasm for KH on Switch. Maybe this is all just an experiment so Square-Enix's cloud gaming arm isn't bored out their asses, dunno lol.
 
Viale

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HOUSEJoseph said:
Any game on PS4, and I mean, ANY game, can run natively on Switch, if the effort is out in. People said the same thing with Persona 5 for some reason.

Dial down the resolution and frame rate, turn off some graphical effects, use FSR, and it will work well.
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ANY game can run(provided the effort and/or budget is allocated), but there are tons of examples of games that *should* run well on switch which aren't great. That's more what I felt the discussion surrounding P5 was(or at least, my point in those discussions)


Cloud is their way of saying "here it is on switch without putting much effort into actually porting it natively"
 
AgeEighty

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Pretty sure we had a thread awhile back in which it was speculated by people in the know that the reason for KH Cloud Version was that all modern versions of the game run with partial PS3 emulation that Switch struggles with.
 
Ridley327

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vestan said:
Oh yeah for sure, but there's probably something going on behind the scenes we're not privy to that has Square-Enix not too interested in bringing the games to the Switch and Xbox (physical) for that matter. Epic directly assisting Square with the PC ports + covering the costs of their development in exchange for exclusivity rights to the tune of $250m is practically zero risk on their end which makes it worth going for.

Maybe they saw MoM Switch sales numbers after sending it out to die and in typical publisher fashion concluded that there's no real fervor or enthusiasm for KH on Switch. Maybe this is all just an experiment so Square-Enix's cloud gaming arm isn't bored out their asses, dunno lol.
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Unless I'm gravely mistaken, the cloud versions of all the other KH games were announced before MoM even released, and you even had a special save file bonus for Smash that unlocked a song in game if you had a save file from MoM.
 
AllMight1

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Cant have it all on all consoles sadly.
At least we got a pretty good compilation available on ps4/5-pc-xbox.
 
vestan

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Ridley327 said:
Unless I'm gravely mistaken, the cloud versions of all the other KH games were announced before MoM even released, and you even had a special save file bonus for Smash that unlocked a song in game if you had a save file from MoM.
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You're right lol, I was just goofin' around with the MoM mention. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the meeting(s) where it was decided that HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX should be cloud-only joints. We've still yet to hear from the horse's mouth why these aren't native IIRC.
 

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I do wonder whether they'll just come to Switch 2, and if you own the cloud versions you'll get the Switch 2 version.
 
Dolce

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what engine does Automata even use? and how is Unreal doing on Switch these days, i remember past games being uhhhhh
 
Jakartalado

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criteriondog said:
Even with KH 3, I think it could run on Switch scaled down. I don't think it would be impossible. Lower effects, res, frame rate, like we've seen it with Doom Eternal, Witcher 3, etc.

This decision is just baffling. :/
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KH3 runs with unlocked framerate from 30-50 fps at 900p on PS4.

There's probably a port from UE4 for Switch that did run at 720p at 30fps-ish. Dragon Quest XI is a good exemple I think
 
Drillow

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AgeEighty said:
Pretty sure we had a thread awhile back in which it was speculated by people in the know that the reason for KH Cloud Version was that all modern versions of the game run with partial PS3 emulation that Switch struggles with.
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This is completely false and makes no sense. The games don't use any form of PS3 emulation.
 
foxuzamaki

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Viale said:
ANY game can run(provided the effort and/or budget is allocated), but there are tons of examples of games that *should* run well on switch which aren't great. That's more what I felt the discussion surrounding P5 was(or at least, my point in those discussions)


Cloud is their way of saying "here it is on switch without putting much effort into actually porting it natively"
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There's no discussion to be had about P5, even if somehow P5R runs worse on switch it def wasent because the game was just too powerful to run on the switch, it would just be bad optimization
 
Viale

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foxuzamaki said:
There's no discussion to be had about P5, even if somehow P5R runs worse on switch it def wasent because the game was just too powerful to run on the switch, it would just be bad optimization
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A button is not pressed and a game is magically ported over to the switch, a lot of effort is gone into these(hopefully), and devs may or may not see that as a worthwhile endeavor to get the games ported over to a reasonable quality. *That* was the point of the discussion.


There are much worse looking games than P5 on the switch currently that shouldn't have been released in the state they're in.
 
foxuzamaki

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Viale said:
A button is not pressed and a game is magically ported over to the switch, a lot of effort is gone into these(hopefully), and devs may or may not see that as a worthwhile endeavor to get the games ported over to a reasonable quality. *That* was the point of the discussion.


There are much worse looking games than P5 on the switch currently that shouldn't have been released in the state they're in.
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Nobody is saying its simple, and there's always a chance that the port can turn out bad, but until it comes out, there's no reason to assume this
 
Viale

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foxuzamaki said:
Nobody is saying its simple, and there's always a chance that the port can turn out bad, but until it comes out, there's no reason to assume this
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There's also no reason to assume it's not a possibility tho?

Game hadn't come out on the switch for years after it's initial release, it was a theory worth considering that they took a look at the effort involved and didn't want to do it.

I'm still not convinced it'll be perfect performance-wise, but I'm fairly jaded towards the switch in general atm in regards to performance.
 
OtakuCoder

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I wonder if the KH cloud thing was more a case of time constraints. They likely wanted to capitalise on Sora being in Smash but didn't have time to get full ports done.
 
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HOUSEJoseph

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PlanetSmasher said:
A Kingdom Hearts game with a crappy frame rate would likely be nearly unplayable at higher difficulties. I'm not sure "turn down the frame rate" is a reasonable solution.

Like, KH1/2/BBS/DDD could all easily run on Switch, but you would have to compromise a lot to get KH3 running on Switch and I don't think Nomura thought it was worth it.
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The games do run between 50-60 fps on PS4 and Xbox, so I'm saying cap it at 30. If it can't lock at 30, lower the resolution down to like, 900p. If still having issues, lower it to 720p. Life is Strange True Colors uses FSR, so use that to help upscale. If there's STILL issues, turn off some of the effects. I'm sure we can get that game running at 30 fps.

Alas, I'm not going to pretend I have the engineering no-how to get all this done. It just seems there's examples that prove it's possible.
 
Hero of Legend

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HOUSEJoseph said:
Any game on PS4, and I mean, ANY game, can run natively on Switch, if the effort is out in. People said the same thing with Persona 5 for some reason.

Dial down the resolution and frame rate, turn off some graphical effects, use FSR, and it will work well.
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Witcher 3 being on Switch should've cemented this once and for all IMO.
 
Neil98

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Kingdom Hearts is developed only by the Osaka Team and Nomura's handpicked studios (all or most under BD3). They must have seen that the Switch cartridge is too small in capacity for the games to fit in it, and thus it would have taken some time to make it happen, and the teams were already work-loaded. Sora was going to appear in Smash, so the fastest option to have KH on Switch was with cloud versions, and that is what we got. Just have patience, I'm sure we will have our native port before the Switch successor is out.
 
foxuzamaki

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Viale said:
There's also no reason to assume it's not a possibility tho?

Game hadn't come out on the switch for years after it's initial release, it was a theory worth considering that they took a look at the effort involved and didn't want to do it.

I'm still not convinced it'll be perfect performance-wise, but I'm fairly jaded towards the switch in general atm in regards to performance.
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There's no need period because it's persona 5, persona 5 isnt on switch because of some technical hurdle. Persona 5 Is a PS3 game and wouldn't be the 1st game atlus has ever ported the platform.
I can't be assed to feel jaded if the game isn't running pitch perfectly. This isn't some new thing with games and It won't be the last
 
Viale

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foxuzamaki said:
There's no need period because it's persona 5, persona 5 isnt on switch because of some technical hurdle. Persona 5 Is a PS3 game and wouldn't be the 1st game atlus has ever ported the platform.
I can't be assed to feel jaded if the game isn't running pitch perfectly. This isn't some new thing with games and It won't be the last
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Yeah, it's not some new thing. It just feels like it happens more, at least personally, on switch.

Glad it hasn't bothered you though.
 
Delusibeta

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PlanetSmasher said:
I honestly think that it all just comes down to Nomura not wanting just ONE game in the KH series to be cloud-based, so all of the older games had to suffer by extension due to the Switch being unable to run KH3 natively.

That being said, Automata already ran pretty badly on PS4/XB1, so I imagine the Switch port is gonna be pretty rough.
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TBH, the fact that they're even attempting a Nier Automata port makes me think that they should have shipped a standard port of Kingdom Heart 3.
 
PlanetSmasher

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Delusibeta said:
TBH, the fact that they're even attempting a Nier Automata port makes me think that they should have shipped a standard port of Kingdom Heart 3.
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Honestly, Nier Automata is probably markedly less complex than KH3 was. And I also imagine Yoko Taro cares a lot less about poor performance in his games than Nomura does.
 
Ridley327

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PlanetSmasher said:
Honestly, Nier Automata is probably markedly less complex than KH3 was. And I also imagine Yoko Taro cares a lot less about poor performance in his games than Nomura does.
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This was definitely true of Drakengard 3!

Honestly though, Automata should be perfectly fine at 30fps as the cap. The gameplay is fast, but it's hardly precise and offers a lot more leniency that pretty much the rest of Platinum's titles.
 
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