This will be a series of posts meant to reinstate some perspective on what is and isn't impressive or worth applauding in the context of handheld gaming.
Witcher 3 is a masterpiece. It it an intricate current-gen AAA open-world RPG, one of the largest-scale open-world RPGs ever released. It's the RPG that set the bar for an entire generation of RPGs on consoles. And it's been ported to Switch, in its entirety, no alterations to content or mechanics. You'll soon learn (or remember) that that makes TW3 on Switch a rather unique case, and that in fact, The Witcher 3's visuals on Switch are among the most impressive ever seen for a port of an ambitious, large scale AAA game to a handheld platform.
The Nintendo Switch has a 6" 720p, 237ppi screen.
540p (the resolution at which The Witcher 3 runs on Switch as a handheld game) is 75% of the Nintendo Switch's native screen resolution.
At 75% of 720p @ 6", that means that The Witcher 3 on Switch has an effective PPI of 177.75.
We're going to compare these measures against those of other games over a series of posts, including some of the most lauded technical achievements in handheld gaming history. Ports of games, engines, and designs that people had once thought impossible on handhelds. Games that were universally celebrated for 'technical wizardry', and for advancing the state of handheld gaming.
In addition to those measures, I will mention compromises made to mechanics, design, and gameplay - major changes made to content and gameplay that made these milestones in handheld gaming possible to achieve. Deep cuts that go beyond impacting the audiovisual experience and change the nature of gameplay itself.
If the effective PPI of a listed game is lower than TW3's 177.75, then that means that the game in question appears blurrier and lower-resolution
on its home platform's screen than The Witcher 3 appears on Switch's screen. The lower the effective PPI, the more noticeable the blur.
And if the % of native resolution is lower, then as a result, image upscaling to native resolution, which further degrades image quality and results in additional blur, has more of a negative effect on that game's image quality as played on its home platform's screen, than Witcher 3 Switch's % of native resolution has on its image quality on Switch's screen.
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Let's begin, with a Vita game. The Playstation Vita has a 5" 544p, 220ppi screen.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted (Vita)
Released in 2012, considered to be one of Vita's most impressive ports - a port of an open-world racing game from PS3 and 360 over to PS Vita
Genre: Racing
Resolution: 640X384 (384p), 70% of native resolution, 155 effective PPI
Screenshots and comparisons (to PS3)
Content changes: Severe reduction to traffic density, severe reduction to the number of competitors and police patrols during races and events both offline and online
Tomorrow I'll post a couple of more Vita 'miracle port' breakdowns in one post, so we can see how other ports of ambitious current-gen AAA games to handhelds held up in the past, and can let that context inform our expectations appropriately.