Why does the switch port run so poorly?

apop

I wouldn't hold my breadth for a more optimized version, but I wouldn't come out and call DiCO incompetent programmers, either.

For one thing, programming games is very difficult, and requires really good programmers with special knowledge and skills to begin with; if you're gonna say they're not competent, you better put up or shut up - show you can do better, or don't call them incompetent at all.

More to the point, though, when a game is not built from the ground up as an exclusive for a given platform, it's almost a given that the game won't be able to tap that platform's real potential.

Why?

Well, you can look at game's performance being determined by three separate but related elements:

1. The assets (graphics and sound data) the game uses.
2. How those assets are moved around in system memory.
3. How those assets and the game logic are processed.

When you're making a game as an exclusive for a given platform, like the new Yoshi game, and you're targeting a specific frame rate (say, 60 fps), what you're gonna do is you're going to

1. Create assets that are easy for the platform to handle, considering things such as memory bandwidth, GPU features and clock speed, etc.
2. Build your asset management logic around those assets and the system's limitations.
3. Not include any assets or logic that constitute a bottleneck for reaching your target frame rate.

Here's the kicker, though - sometimes, not even doing this is enough. Sometimes you need a programmer who's really good at optimization - and I mean fricking genius level good at optimization - to meet your target frame rate. I know because the well-known company I worked for was stacked with brilliant programmers (who've gone on to illustrious careers at the likes of Square Enix), but there was one who was really good at optimization, and you'd hear about how he'd just double to frame rate of the games he worked on; so if he hadn't been on board, lots of really brilliant programmers would not have been able to get the level of performance the retail versions of the games shipped with.

But wait, there's more!

You know why games like Yoshi run at 60fps on Unreal 4? It's not because of the developer, it's because of the publisher. You see, a company like Nintendo has the financial resources to hire some freelance genius to optimize a game; but they won't do that, because they don't really need to do that, because they can just pay Epic to send one of their top engineers, someone who knows the Unreal Engine like the back of his hand, and optimize the game for the developer - it's what Square Enix did when developing Dragon Quest XI, actually.

So can you get Bloodstained to run on Switch at 60 fps? Maybe, but you'd probably need to redo the assets, redo the program's architecture, drop the resolution to 720p and then have someone from Epic come and look at it. None of these things are realistic, and so the game will probably be locked at 30 fps forever. That said, if Nintendo does release an improved version of the Switch, and if it's possible for the system to identify itself to the software it runs as distinct from the original Switch, and if the performance increase is good enough that reaching a stable 60 fps is feasible without redoing assets and major portions of code, then 505 might be inclined to provide a patch to game at a later point in time.

But those are a lot of ifs.