Why The Switch Still Excites

The Nintendo Switch launched in 2017 as a game console. The main reason "game consoles" exist is to create a common platform for software developers to craft games that utilise common hardware, which is in contrast to something like a PC where a developer cannot guarantee the equity of the hardware running their game.

At the time, the prospect of a tablet-sized home gaming console on its own was entirely unheard of. But what's more, and the focus of this article, is that it continued on the 3DS's legacy of using ARM-based processors, similar to other tablets and mobile computing devices. Like Apple's recent endeavour into its new ARM-based MacBooks using Apple silicon, Nintendo Switch was the pioneer for game systems leveraged as a "home console" using this architecture. As most other devices usually use x86-based APUs, similar to desktop PCs, shifting the common game development environment towards this uncommon architecture directly allows developers to familiarise themselves with optimising studio-quality games for ARM.

Fast forward to 2023, and Nintendo Switch has indeed transformed the consumer device sector. We now have devices like the Lenovo Legion Go, a mobile x86 PC designed around its DualStrike controllers that dwarfs the Nintendo Switch in computational performance, even being able to emulate a number of its most demanding titles. But what about the sector that the Switch carved out for its ARM64 factor?

As previously mentioned, most mobile devices, such as phones, tablets, and some laptops, all utilise a flavour of ARM64 as its instruction set. ARM is a "reduced instruction set" computational platform, RISC for short. Instead of supporting legacy or redundant instructions on a chip level, RISC platforms can save significant energy and computational overhead by truncating these unneeded instructions during fabrication, contributing to the viability of pocketable and fanless devices.

However, the predominant platform for these devices is Android, which is an open-source OS spanning thousands of phone models. This means that a game developer cannot know for certain that their game will run properly on every device, unless they cater toward the least-common denominator (the weaker devices), effectively bottlenecking the viability of the entire platform. For example, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor has multitudes better performance than the Switch. But there are no developers that make games with such a high-end system as its primary target, as only a small fraction of Android users would ever be able to run that software properly. As a company, pouring funds into a project that most of your users cannot use is a fully pointless action.

Being made on such a common platform, the Nintendo Switch hardware has had much of its functionality documented and referenced in Nvidia's Technical Reference Manual (TRM) ever since the Tegra X1's introduction with the Nvidia Shield TV. This assisted with the reverse-engineering efforts of the Nintendo Switch during the development of projects like SwitchBrew and Atmosphère, which both are also massive assets to teams aiming to implement console emulators on other devices.

The most exciting thing about this is that with all of the Switch's focused development over nearly a decade now, amazing developments have been made towards studio-quality games running on ARM chipsets, not limited to ports of full console games such as Persona 5, DOOM Eternal, and The Witcher III to the Switch, but also its original titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Games of this magnitude were the antithesis to ARM devices for the past decade or so because of the Android platform.

That's one hurdle we overcame. We now have viable software on this architecture, but the Switch and Android are still entirely different platforms! Normally, running game consoles on other devices requires emulation to achieve. But I hear you: Switch emulation still requires a moderately beefy PC. Why are we even considering phones?

This is where the Switch being an ARM64 device comes into play again. What if it were possible to run the Switch's original CPU instructions on the CPU of the new device as-is, bypassing CPU emulation? After all, the number one limiting factor when it comes to smooth emulation is... emulation. Specifically, the translation of instructions meant for the original CPU into instructions that the target CPU can interpret and execute. It's not any different from having an interpreter between a person speaking English and German. It would make everything faster if you removed the middleman.

This still wouldn't automatically result in a perfect gameplay experience - Switch games run under the Switch OS and have a number of software calls that reference the Switch's OS, Horizon. The games expect a number of features and also features from the proprietary hardware of the console, like the GPU. Regardless, CPU emulation represents one of the bigger bottlenecks for smooth playback. And luckily, the developers of yuzu had the same conclusion, with developments of native code execution in its mainline builds finally being released to the public in the past week!

With all of the developments that happened on the Switch ever since 2017, with all of the software made for it; your local mobile device may now also be able to reap the same benefits, and become as legitimate of a gaming console as the Nintendo Switch. NCE improves performance dramatically, with some games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate already running dramatically faster and more stable than on the Nintendo Switch itself.

But forget phones, what about the dedicated Android handhelds that were doomed to emulation of old consoles, game streaming, and the scattering of studio-quality Android games? Now, especially when developed with active cooling in mind, they can become your Android-based console replacement, running these bigger titles akin to a real game console. And that goes to the flipside too: yuzu is also able to run homebrew - Switch software made by people like you and me - equally as well. And there is no shortage of developer support on this end either.

Mac devices are infamous for being particularly poor for gaming. While more developments are necessary before NCE can really shine on a MacBook, this is one of the largest hurdles for it.

iPhones, which are also ARM64-based, do have a common hardware platform that developers can develop against. It's easier to tell consumers you need an iPhone 15, rather than throwing them technical specification requirements.. This is why they are the first devices to receive full console games like Resident Evil Village. But it seems like Apple may might be a bit late to the punch, even if Android happened to get there in a rudimentary way this time.

Yuzu's NCE development breathes new purpose into entire categories of devices, all thanks to the influence of Nintendo Switch.