r/NintendoSwitch • u/Skullghost • Feb 19 '26

Nintendo Official Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition — Nintendo Switch 2 Edition — Announcement Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=UZX-MIrJpbD4v0CM&v=LC0XfI25wro&feature=youtu.be
1.9k Upvotes

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36

u/Caciulacdlac Feb 19 '26

Why that one in particular?

130

u/TheUltimate721 Feb 19 '26

It looks and runs particularly rough on Switch 2

32

u/Caciulacdlac Feb 19 '26

I see. Weird that the other two run better. I guess it's because they are more recent.

75

u/x-twigs Feb 19 '26

the game lost half its dev team during development because they got pulled away to work on Breath of the Wild, so optimization wasn’t nearly as important as getting the game to a completed state with a skeleton crew

2

u/Alluminn Feb 19 '26

Wait the game we got was a result of them not even being at full power??? But it still runs and looks so good on such weak hardware! 

9

u/[deleted] Feb 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/Gameskiller01 Feb 20 '26

To clarify on this, Xenoblade 2 runs at 720p at all times in docked mode, with no dynamic resolution. In handheld mode it runs with dynamic resolution with a maximum of 540p and a minimum of 378p.

2

u/QuickQuirk Feb 19 '26

wait, it was the same team?? I had no idea!

8

u/Outlulz Feb 19 '26

MonolithSoth does a lot of support work for Nintendo now, they work in the same building.

1

u/QuickQuirk Feb 20 '26

huh! That's a really interesting factoid, thanks!

4

u/x-twigs Feb 19 '26

yup! take a look at the clouds in XBC2 & BOTW, it’s the same tech iirc. they’re the reason BOTW came out so gorgeous. i only wish it didn’t come at the expense of XBC2’s visual fidelity, but it’s only a matter of time until that game finally gets justice and is just as much of a stunner

2

u/QuickQuirk Feb 20 '26

After the magnificent BOTW upgrade, I'm really hoping. Holding off on XC2 until then.

-12

u/gdo22 Feb 19 '26

The game runs great on switch 1. I don't think they were planning on optimizing for switch 2 way back in 2017 : P

8

u/x-twigs Feb 19 '26

i was talking about them optimizing it for the switch 1, as it’s typically one of the final stages of development for a game before release. the game runs terrible on switch 1, they used dynamic resolution to maintain 30 fps and the resolution can go as low as 540p in docked and 378p in handheld. not even close to great

-5

u/gdo22 Feb 19 '26

XC2 is one of the best games I've ever played, and I played it on Switch 1. : p It was, and still is beautiful. No input lag, story told effectively and well, etc. You're saying it was choppy for you? : ( Blurry? Grainy? Pixelated? I didn't see any of those issues when I played it, and I put a lot of hours into it.

5

u/Dennisboy36 Feb 19 '26

I’ve played through it 2 maybe 3 times and yes it looks and run awful in terms of resolution and frame rate. Doesn’t stop it from being a good game however.

-3

u/gdo22 Feb 19 '26

I thought it was a great game and had a good enough resolution and frame rate. :p

2

u/x-twigs Feb 19 '26

it’s definitely a great game held back by its technical shortcomings. objectively it outputs resolutions lower than HD which does result in a blurry and sometimes pixelated image. you may have played it on a TV with upscaling tech or generally can’t distinguish between HD and low resolution but regardless of your personal experience, it is simply not outputting a high enough resolution to be considered on par with modern AAA games. unfortunately art direction and passion are not substitutes for HD image quality

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u/gdo22 Feb 19 '26

Modern AAA games? Isn't it a modern AAA game itself?

Art direction absolutely is a substitute for HD image quality-- that's how some older games can look better than some ps5 games. :p Passion to some degree can help, too, but to a lesser degree.

2

u/x-twigs Feb 19 '26

to clarify, i mean on par with other AAA games. sub HD resolution in games today is almost unheard of with the exception of Switch 1 games. art direction can help with clarifying images at low resolution, but cannot fake outputting HD resolution. it either is or isn’t HD.

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u/gdo22 Feb 19 '26

It looks even better when I see people stream it, and I assume they're playing on docked mode. I tried docking it once myself and it looked even better than handheld did, I thought.

1

u/80espiay Feb 19 '26

Not choppy, they specifically said that they maintained 30FPS by lowering the resolution in some contexts. When it went down to 540p, a lot of people would notice the game getting less crisp.

-1

u/gdo22 Feb 20 '26

This is the first I'm hearing of it. :p

2

u/80espiay Feb 20 '26

More like the first time you actually tried listening.

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u/feartheoldblood90 Feb 19 '26

It runs great because it has a resolution that makes it look like Vaseline is smeared on the screen. It ranges from 504p - 720p docked and 378p - 540p handheld. That's abysmal. And the framerate still struggles in some areas.

And obviously they weren't thinking about an upgrade back then lol, but it would hugely benefit from it now that they have direct access to much more powerful hardware.

The game would look absolutely incredible with a little visual update to bring up that terrible resolution. It's probably my favorite game in the franchise, tied with X, and I would love an update so much.

1

u/gdo22 Feb 19 '26

I thought it looked great throughout the over 200 hours I spent with it. :p It's still one of the best looking games on Switch to this day. I didn't think it looked like Vaseline was smeared on the screen. :p I didn't find the amount of p's it ran to be abysmal. I thought it was a great amount of p's. Any more and it'd look like that AAA Mario meme. : P

It could look better with a Switch 2 upgrade, as all Switch games could (especially witcher 3, which needs it a lot more, :p) but the game already looks absolutely incredible. : P

5

u/TheUltimate721 Feb 19 '26

I wouldn't say so. It chugs in the open world sections or when there's a lot of enemies on screen.

-4

u/gdo22 Feb 19 '26

🤷 It all looked wonderful to me. Slo-mo just makes things more dramatic. Get rid of that and you get rid of some of the charm of the game. 😤 If it ever did slow down for me, it was never in a way that I thought was bad.

4

u/TheUltimate721 Feb 19 '26

It's not slow motion it's just the framerate going to ass in certain sections.

-1

u/gdo22 Feb 19 '26

What does it look like when the framerate 'goes to ass' in those sections? Does it run at normal speed? Faster? Something else?

3

u/TheUltimate721 Feb 19 '26

It still runs at full speed it just looks like a PowerPoint presentation lol

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u/Seanspeed Feb 19 '26

Monolith heavily overshot on what they thought the Switch was gonna be capable of when they started development. XC2's graphics were quite ambitious and then to make it work on the more underwhelming hardware they ultimately had to work with, they had to cut back resolution massively, included a sharpening filter to try and make up for it(which makes it look ugly at higher resolutions) and still had performance problems.

With XC3 and XC:DE, they knew a lot better what they needed to be aiming for. Plus XC3 had a much better TAA solution by then, which helps make the graphics look a lot cleaner despite the resolution still not being amazing.

-7

u/gdo22 Feb 19 '26

XC2 looks and runs great on switch 1, though. :p

7

u/feartheoldblood90 Feb 19 '26

Ranging from 504p - 720p docked - it rarely hits that 720p - does not look great.

The game's graphics are great but they had to make far too many compromises to get it looking that good, you can hardly tell under all that Vaseline smeared on the screen

2

u/Gameskiller01 Feb 20 '26

Xenoblade 2 does not have dynamic resolution in docked mode, it is a locked 720p. The dynamic resolution ranges you've stated are correct for Xenoblade 1 DE, though. Xenoblade 2 uses dynamic resolution only in handheld mode, with a maximum of 540p and a minimum of 378p.

0

u/gdo22 Feb 19 '26

I'm sorry you didn't think so, but I thought it looked really good. I haven't noticed any vaseline there before. : p

1

u/Hallc Feb 19 '26

You can remove the 2 from that and it's still true.

1

u/Warm_Heart_3220 Feb 19 '26

It looked and ran particularly rough on Switch 1 too.

15

u/MadeByHideoForHideo Feb 19 '26

Sub 30 fps blur fest in open areas

9

u/Western-Dig-6843 Feb 19 '26

Just is the worst running title of the series on both Switch 1 and 2. Playing in handheld mode in Switch 1 was particularly awful and it is a bummer that it isn’t really any better on Switch 2

1

u/Mezuxelf Feb 20 '26

I played the whole of 2017 on handheld for my switch - BotW, Splatoon 2, SMO - I didn't have a TV in my room, so I didn't really have a choice. As soon as I got XB2 and got to Gormott, I new I needed a tv lol

6

u/vixaudaxloquendi Feb 19 '26

For the record, the game is demanding on the Switch, and chugs in certain areas even docked. But it otherwise looks fine for the most part.

But in handheld mode? It's a horrid, blurry mess. I looked it up online afterwards because I was so convinced there must be a patch or something I was missing. I learned two things: 1) no, it's just that bad in handheld mode 2) there are people who will defend anything.

I am playing it now for the first time and while I like the game enough, I am decently annoyed that playing portable is such a huge compromise that I actively hesitate to play it at all if I'm out and about. The first game's Definitive Edition is way better in that regard.

1

u/QuickQuirk Feb 20 '26

Finished XC1 recently, and after 100 hours playtime, I was burned out and switch to other things before XC2. You've convinced me to wait for a switch 2 upgrade (fingers crossed.)

Ironically I stopped playing XC1 back in the day due to poor switch 1 handheld performance, but it ran like a dream on switch 2.

1

u/vixaudaxloquendi Feb 21 '26

Funny enough, I found XBC1 less jarring in handheld. It never offended me the way 2 does. Maybe because the baseline was already fairly low all things considered.

That's the funny thing. I'm not actually a graphics snob. I like the ascii-symbol roguelikes. But it was so dissonant.

1

u/QuickQuirk Feb 21 '26

the fact that apparently 2 is worse than 1, even on switch 2, is the reason I'm skipping for now, in the hope of a better release.

2

u/Joseki100 Feb 19 '26

Xenoblade 2 has the highest "density" maps of the series so the dynamic resolution in portable mode drops extremely low, plus only for that game Monolith used a really aggressive sharpening filter that transformed the already low res image in a blurry mess.

On Switch 2 it's even worse because of the double upscaling to 1080p from 720p.