With Nintendo Switch 2 arriving with us just a day before release, there’s little time for Digital Foundry to put together any kind of comprehensive coverage – but there are a number of system features I was curious to test out, none more important than backwards compatibility. Would Switch 2 improve performance running Switch 1 games? The first game I tested was Batman: Arkham Knight, described by DF’s Oliver Mackenzie as “the worst performing software I have reviewed to date at Digital Foundry”. 18 months on he says it still is – but the good news is that Switch 2 fixes all of its performance issues, at times doubling performance. Put simply, Switch 1 games do run better on Switch 2.
Batman: Arkham Knight is a game with a long and storied history for Digital Foundry, not least because of its highly compromised PC version, which was so bad it was pulled from sale before returning in an improved but still poor shape. The Switch version though – I played it for the first time today on original hardware and it remains the same “unmitigated disaster” we reported on back in December 2023. We’ve talked a lot about “impossible ports” for the Switch and we’ve seen games like Doom Eternal arrive on the console in compromised form, but still delivering a good experience overall. Batman: Arkham Knight on Switch is anything but.
For the purposes of our testing though, this actually makes for an interesting challenge for Switch 2 backwards compatibility as the evidence suggests that Arkham Knight pushes all system components beyond tolerable limits. Graphically, the game is rich and detailed, pushing a lot of detail in its characters and open world. Meanwhile, the fact that it is an open world means that the CPU is pushed hard streaming in and decompressing data. And finally, gigantic stutters found in the Switch port suggest that storage is also stressed.
The end result is astonishingly poor. There are graphical compromises that Switch 2 can never fix – dramatically poorer textures and no anti-aliasing whatsoever – but what’s truly remarkable is just how bad performance is. Based on measurements of capture taken today, Switch’s stuttering problems extend to 180ms frame-times hitting the user in rapid succession, often depressing performance under 20fps but feeling a lot worse. Driving sections in particular are borderline unplayable. The 30fps frame-rate cap is almost advisory in nature.