 So there's an interesting issue that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has brought to light in terms of the direction of certain Nintendo Switch games. And there's actually a thread about this on Reset Era as well that kind of inspired me to make this video and do some research myself because I own Xenoblade Chronicles 2. And apparently this is the issue. There is an emerging trend of Nintendo Switch titles treating Doct mode as the base specs performing worse undocked. Now obviously, no matter what spec is chosen as the base spec, whether it is whether developers base their building of their game around the portable mode or the docked mode, it's always going to be worse in portable mode or at least it should be because docked mode is obviously significantly more powerful. Now not so much so that it's like a whole new generation, but when you upclock things that almost doubles the clock speed of certain things like the GPU, you obviously are going to have a lot better performance in docked mode. And a lot of games, including Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has built their game around docked mode and then made a lot of sacrifices to make it run in portable mode. In fact, what seems to be happening with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and we're not going to talk about framerate because the framerate seems to have issues in docked mode and portable mode. And that's strictly on the developers and the engine and maybe the game not being as polished as it needs to be. But what the concerning issue is here is that in docked mode, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 runs at a locked 720p. In portable mode, the game pretty much never hits 720p. Now, the footage you're seeing here is stuff I recorded. I'm not that far into the game. There's a lot of cutscenes and stuff. I'm going to try to cut the cutscenes out if anything slips in. I do apologize. It's just because I didn't have enough footage, but I'm trying to show off the difference between docked and undocked mode. And it's really hard to tell the quality differences here because you're at a camera shooting at a screen and versus obviously direct feed footage because I have no way to direct feed footage the undocked mode. But you'll see as we get out to the field that the undocked mode very clearly is a much lower resolution than 720p. Now, we do because of digital foundry, we know that it runs at a dynamic resolution, but it really never seems to hit 720p. It is sub HD, you know, even 720p HD, pretty much the entire time. And this isn't the first game to do that. There have been several other games that have done this as well. Well, when I say several, more like a handful. Now, these handful of games are, you know, big games, important games. But there's obviously other games that show the other side of the spectrum, like a Breath of the Wild, which looks to some people even better in handheld mode because of the, you know, the pixel density being shrunk down in comparison to on a big screen TV and that the performance, at least at launch, was better in portable mode versus docked mode, which was really strange at the time, although several patches have come out and fixed that performance in docked mode sense. But here's what is interesting about why people are debating about whether or not this should happen, whether or not developers should base their game around the portable mode or the docked mode. And it's based on the usage stats that were provided by Nintendo. And 30% of the users of Switch use the system as handheld only. 20% are docked only, 50% are mixed, as in they use docked and handheld equally or pretty close to equally. So I kind of fall in the docked only because of the nature of what I do here. I'm constantly recording footage or live streaming. But if you take away that aspect of my job in terms of me just playing the Switch on my own, I'm probably in that 50% spectrum of docked and or portable because there's a lot of convenience in the portable aspect. And there's a lot of convenience in the docked aspect. You know, if I happen to be in my office by the TV that has my dock, I'm going to dock it and enjoy it on a 32 inch TV. But if I am upstairs in my bedroom or if I'm outside or whatever the case, maybe I am playing it in portable mode and I love both aspects of this. But here's the thing, we have to start looking at this was always going to be a question for developers of which which aspect of the switch are you going to base your development around? There is a strong argument to be made that they should be basing when developers make games, they should be basing their game around the docked mode because Nintendo themselves has strictly advertised and continues to advertise that this is a portable home console. So what that means is the top spec range is what you should make your game around and then make quality adjustments for on the go. But there's also an equal argument and a fair argument to be said if you base the building of your game around the the portable aspect, one, you're going to have an extremely good looking portable version of the game. And then two, when you put it in the dock, you can do things like up the frame rate or up the base resolution. We've seen some games do this breath of the wild as an example runs at 720p native on the screen, no dynamic resolution scaling. But when you put it on the dock, it runs at 900p. There really isn't a lot of performance gains or anything else. It's just a higher resolution. And the question is, should they be doing something similar to Breath of the Wild or should they be doing something similar to Xenoblade Chronicles 2? Now, personally, my experience with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in portable mode is that I think it looks OK. Now, I'm not someone that is all about that pixel density life, all about that high resolution life. Right. And this is weird because I have I'm literally recording this right now. I'm watching my my audio go here on a 4K monitor, two 4K monitors. In fact, on a 4K capable gaming PC that I play 4K games on. I also obviously will switch game at 1080p or 900p, whatever resolution it spits out depending on the game. And it's I guess I have learned that while resolution does matter, I'm not going to sit here and say it doesn't. That seems to be the sticking point here because the performance isn't any better in dock mode than portable mode, as in the frame rate is just as choppy in dock mode as in portable mode in this case. But it is an interesting conversation, nonetheless. And Xenoblade Chronicles 2, as I'm showing in this video or trying to show as best as I can, is just one example. The question is, what do you think should be a standard? And I don't know if there's ever going to be a standard. There clearly isn't a standard at Nintendo when you have Breath of the Wild targeting portable mode and then just upping the resolution for docked mode. And then you have Xenoblade Chronicles clearly targeting docked mode and then adding a dynamic resolution scale or that everything is basically sub HD and for some people really, really blurry. It brings up some interesting aspects. Now, it should be noted that this isn't new per se. I think there was some PlayStation Vita games that ran at like three hundred and sixty P and the whole point of PlayStation Vita was to run things that if it wasn't HD, at least a heck of a lot closer to HD, like a six hundred P or even a five forty P resolution, three sixty P on the Vita just doesn't look that great. And that was some things that people chastised about certain Vita games that were kind of sort of console style quality ports. It's going to be interesting to see. I think a lot of games, at least from the third parties, are going to target the higher spec range because the higher spec range is closer to what the games run like on other systems. But that's for third party, multi platform games. When you're talking about exclusives, there's a lot more wiggle room. There is a should exclusives target the portable mode and create the best possible portable experience and then just up the resolution or should they target the docked mode, which can be argued to be console mode and target the highest possible amazing abilities you can output on here and then have to get all the sacrifices possible into portable mode. It's interesting prospect. It's almost like the docked versus handheld in terms of which is better. Is switch better to play doctor is a better to play handle. The more people play doctor, the more people I handle. In fact, our first arguing with ourselves, the method is literally based around switch docked mode versus switch portable mode in terms of what user convenience and user preference is. Not necessarily, you know, which games are better in this and that. And so it's a very interesting debate. And I kind of want to bring this to your phone. This isn't news. This isn't something like new out there per se outside of the fact that Digital Foundry recently released their analysis of it, which brought further light to the fact that there's a heck of a lot of sacrifices resolution wise in handheld mode that can make the playing environment a little less enjoyable for those in portable mode. In fact, basically the argument here is that portable mode, at least in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and a select few other titles, typically third party games are at that point where portable mode does just not feel good. It just is a bad experience. But then you slap this thing in the docked mode and you're like, whoa, OK, and obviously, you know, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 only running at a 720p in docked mode is also upsetting to some. But then you consider it's a wide open space open world and they've done a lot of really interesting things with the visuals. There is some some form of anti-aliasing that kicks in at times. It's kind of like a dynamic anti-aliasing in docked mode. It's really interesting and it kind of makes things look smoother at times and higher higher resolution than they really are. It's a really interesting trick that Monolithsoft put into this game. But I don't know. You guys, let me know what you think in the comments below. I'm very curious to see what your preference is specifically for exclusives, because I think for third party multi-platform games, it's to be expected that the higher specs are always going to be targeted and then they're going to make whatever resolution or frame rate, you know, sacrifices they need to in portable mode, but that's because they have to try to match as close as they can to the games on other systems. Whereas I'm really curious what you guys' opinions are on the the exclusive front. Should exclusives be targeting the spec range of the portable aspect and then just tossing, you know, using the extra power docked mode for a higher base resolution or maybe potentially in the games that can have a higher frame rate or should developers like Monolithsoft did for exclusives be targeting the higher spec range and then making whatever sacrifices they can to make it run portably. It's a very interesting debate and I don't know that there's going to be a clear cut answer here, but it's interesting when we're seeing that there is some people that feel on both sides of the fence because I don't know where I stand on this because I play a lot in docked mode, you know, there's obviously some bias in me that says, yeah, just make the best looking, best running games you kind of in the highest specs, then there's part of me that says, yeah, but when I take this thing on the go, if it's a noticeably worse experience, is it something I really want them to do? As I said to me, I think Xenobit Chronicles 2 is being a little overblown because when you look at the videos, even when you're looking at this video and you see the pixel density being blown up into a bigger screen format in a video, it looks a heck of a lot worse than it actually does when you're playing on the screen, but it's still an issue and there are definitely moments in Xenobit where you could tell, man, this thing is running at 360, man, this thing might even be dipping to 240p at times and that is extremely noticeable on this much larger screen than it is on like a 3DS where you know it's running at like 240p at times. Anyways, folks, you guys let me know. It's just a very interesting conversation point and I want to know your guys' thoughts on it. Anyways, I am Nathaniel Ruffalojans from Nintendo Prime and if you liked this video, you know what to do. And if you disliked the video, hit that dislike button, subscribe for more content and I will catch you in the next one.