The last Nintendo Direct left us with a moment of what are considered bombshells of the year, and that is that after a long time waiting, the giant finally presented the new installment of Metroid Prime. It was about Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, and its appearance in the video was so spectacular that many began to claim that the gameplay had been extracted from a copy running on the new hardware of the future Switch 2. But is that true?
It's still the same old Switch
The video in question shows real gameplay captured from the development version of the new game. The appearance of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is spectacular, and its fluidity and rhythm seemed to show that we were facing another generation very different from the current one. But far from confirming what many would like to hear, the people of Digital Foundry He wanted to clear up doubts and confirmed that the gameplay in question ran from a current Nintendo Switch.
That's what they answered to the question IGN asked, since, although the game won't be released until 2025, it is easy to think that it will practically be developed for the new platform. But Richard Leadbetter, technology editor at Digital Foundry, has enough reason to think the game ran on a Switch.
To begin with, the video resolution is 900p, so it fits perfectly with the resolution at which Switch works in dock mode, and especially the same one at which Metroid Prime Remastered runs.
The main reasons he points to to ensure that it is not a version running on Switch 2 is that the output resolution should be greater than 900p, in addition to the fact that no anti-aliasing effects via DLSS, so there is no indication that new hardware is behind the demo.
A demo that is too perfect
Regarding the good performance of the gameplay, Leadbetter bets that everything is due to the maturation of the relationship between Switch and the developers, who after many years working with said hardware, are already able to squeeze the most out of the performance. Even more so when the Metroid Prime 4 project has been in the works for many years, so it is easy to think that the game is going to run smoothly.
Another issue will be the transition from Switch to Switch 2, which is something that will probably happen. With no estimated launch date for the new console, we don't know what will come first, the Metroid game or Switch 2, but it would be very strange for a game of this caliber to not have a specific version for the new console. We'll see how all this ends, but knowing at least that the game will arrive sometime in 2025, we're already calmer.
Source: IGN