 Before I get into this video I want to remind you that we're giving away a Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Nintendo Switch OLED, in fact we already unboxed one if you guys haven't seen that and showed off that we have that second one on hand. Also we're giving away a collector's edition of Tears of the Kingdom and a pin from PAX East. To enter all you can do is go down to the link in the pinned comment or the description and you guys know we're on our road to 133,000 subscribers because Nintendo is 133 years old so I thought it would just be a really neat number to shoot for next. I'll let you know what our new goal is if and when we obtain that one. Alright guys so look Tears of the Kingdom we've been talking about it for months at this point it is an amazing game we're literally looking forward to it lots of positive reactions lots of information out there and there's a lot we could talk about but today I want to address something that's a little bit of a negative with this game that has happened since the previews came out and it's been talked about ad nauseam by some people a lot of the written previews sort of overlooked it but a lot of the video previews have mentioned it in some form or another either addressing it as I didn't see this as a problem or addressing it as it being a major problem and what are we talking about while we're talking about the performance the frame rates we're not even getting into the resolution I know Digital Foundry did a pixel count at one point saying it's 900p which is exactly what it was in Breath of the Wild when docked so that's kind of cool I guess we'll see for sure because there hasn't been a pixel count of this brand new gameplay and I'm not sure Digital Foundry got to go hands-on for this because the kind of reviews they do the hands-on thing wouldn't really be as big of a deal but what I want to talk about is this idea that the frame rates are a major issue and this idea of what it means because Nintendo's at Gamescom this year haven't made a video on this yet but whatever maybe we just say this is part of that video Nintendo's going to Gamescom they don't go to Gamescom very often they didn't go last year as an example they only go when they have things to show they didn't go to E3 this year originally stating we don't have enough to show for E3 so we're not gonna go to E3 and this is before E3 was cancelled so they clearly think they have enough to show at Gamescom which happens in August and notably Nintendo has nothing announced after July so I'm bringing this up because I think this might have something to do with Tears of the Kingdom and what am I talking about well first let's get into the framerate problems and who's talking about I'm gonna bring up two places specifically one of them being Arthur Geese he is a co-founder of Polygon he said I played Tears of the Kingdom last week I'll talk about it more soon but one the biggest compliment I can give it on the last day of demos is I attracted a small group of Nintendo personnel staring in horror at what I was building and two I saw major performance issues and then skill up a pretty big YouTube channel out there noted in their preview it's about 25 minutes long that yeah the performance issues are there and they do think it affects gameplay in a couple of ways one it chugs down exploration a little bit because when you're hitting things like 15 frames that does affect your your user inputs and and all that stuff and obviously it just doesn't feel good when it happens and here's the thing that I want to point out about all of this obviously these are demos and we have to know these are demos vertical slices of games probably likely pretty finished versions if I had to guess the game comes out in two weeks right so like these aren't like demos that they probably had sitting there from you know six months ago so I would presume these are more recent builds if not possibly the final game I know some people are framing it as oh it's a vertical slice it certainly looked like it wasn't Nintendo was just watching over your shoulder saying you can't go over there you can't go there you can't go there how these demos typically work with open-world games from Nintendo and I know this because of E3 is basically they limit you by time and then in this case they didn't just limit you by time they also watched what you were doing and said no you can't go over there so yeah I kind of think this might have just been the full game with a timer added so you're loading a save file with a timer and you just get to play for 50 minutes and 20 minutes there were two different save files anyways the point I'm trying to make here isn't about all of that what I actually want to talk about is the fact that it is a demo so maybe other that's the thing I also don't know that the performance issue is that big of a deal and I'm gonna state that I don't think it's that big of a deal because Breath of the Wild when I went on to sell 30 million units just on Switch and that is with performance issues the Switch version had performance issues and when it first launched Kakariko Village and Korak Forest both chugged as did various other aspects of the game those various other aspects of the game still chugged sometimes and you're running that road for the first time to Sidon and you get to the all the electric arrows firing from the Lizalfos in that one section yeah Breath of the Wild still chugs there and while they patched up Kakariko Village if you go to Korak Forest yeah the game still chugs there and yet people beloved the game they think it's amazing they think it's awesome and for the most part the frame rate drops didn't bother most players and I think that's going to be the case this time around is that the tears of the kingdom frame rate drops didn't bother most players one thing to remember is the scope of this game the scale the draw distance everything was increased and yet frame rate drops look to be about the same as Breath of the Wild so to me you could argue maybe they should have not increased the draw distance not increase the visuals and maybe just had it be a more stable 30 fps and I think that's fine I also think that this game was partially designed in the later years with the next system in mind we've already seen that the Nintendo European research and development team is hiring people to help with cross-platform play between Nintendo switch and the next generation platform that's not me saying that that's Nintendo themselves saying that so it doesn't make me feel like this is obviously designed with a little bit across platform action in mind and when we play on the next system I doubt that there's any problems with this and that's where Gamescom comes in because we're probably getting a new system this year or next year and if it's this year it would make sense why Nintendo wants to be at Gamescom because they probably want people to go hands on with the system and whatever games they're announcing for the second half of this year there so in that sense maybe this is just one of those it chugs here a little bit just like Breath of the Wild the Zelda team is ambitious then you might be more ambitious than this current system can do but they also might know the newest systems around the corner that runs it and a silky smooth frame rate in fact maybe they already have a patch ready for the new system where you could either do a performance mode or obviously a visual mode like in a visual enhancement mode performance mode can be like a 60 fps mode visual enhancement mode can be full 4k at 30 fps so I'm just throwing out there that well I it is a little disappointing and I don't know that it's going to affect the overall review ratings that much because it certainly didn't for Breath of the Wild that had similar problems I do think that some people are overblowing this to be too much like this is exactly what was wrong with Scarlet and Violet Scarlet and Violet's frame rate issues and graphical glitches were excessive nothing I've seen in the gameplay consistently from all these previews is excessive aka it's just happening non-stop all the time it's really in only specific scenarios and situations and with certain effects going on that seem to be causing this and that's exactly what it was like in Breath of the Wild Breath of the Wild's a pretty smooth experience most times besides certain situations with certain elements and certain things going on and that seems to be the case here as well so ultimately if you thought Breath of the Wild was fine but Scarlet and Violet was an embarrassment then Tears of the Kingdom is probably going to be fine for you as well and I know a lot of you are saying I'm just a Nintendo shill I'm just making excuses Nate what's wrong with you why are you defending this and the reality is that I'm not really defending it what I am saying is the switch is a six year plus year old platform using eight year old technology and yeah it's time for something new and we've all known this for a little bit this game is just a definitive proof to me that Nintendo knows it too this is one of their number one internal development teams and their vision and scope goes beyond the capabilities of what the switch can handle at a smooth 30 fps and when that's the case you know we could use excuses oh it was a Wii U game before we can't have that excuse this time it's very clear that they are preparing for what's next we've known they've been preparing for what's next it's at least 2021 when they finally made first public reference that they are working towards what's next so guys I'm just going to sit back and say I do think a new switch is coming this year and by the time that happens you're going to play Zelda on that and tears of the kingdom on all these framerate issues are going to be a thing of the past and no one's really going to care anymore but at launch just wait people who are hypersensitive to frame rates hypersensitive to user input delay and stuff are going to be complaining about this digital foundries going to drop a video likely pointing out how big of a problem this is and guys I just want you to know if it didn't bother you in Breath of the Wild then you're probably fine if it did bother you in Breath of the Wild then you're probably not fine and it's a fair criticism I'm not going to sit here and pretend that it's not I just think I just think the Zelda team wanted to craft something that might be beyond the switches capabilities to handle at a smooth frame rate clearly and I don't want to put it all on the Zelda team for this I know I know I know we chastise the Pokemon team but what was the number one thing we chastise them about well if Breath of the Wild that looks better than you has less problems again we use Breath of the Wild as a reference point if we use Breath of the Wild as a reference point again and it just has the same performance issues but with higher detailed environments longer draw distances and more things going on on screen then it's still a pretty impressive feat that they don't have more performance issues than what Breath of the Wild did they chose to use that extra processing to do more amazing things with the gameplay I guess we'll find out when the game launches if that was the correct decision thank you guys for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video