Games powered by Unreal Engine 5 on Nintendo Switch 2 are likely held back by the system's CPU, and some engine updates (such as Lumen Medium Quality), taking the system's specifications into account, will be required to implement some of the engine's trademark features on the console,the results of which may be seen in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book.
In a new analysis shared on YouTube, the tech experts at Digital Foundry take a look at the Unreal Engine 5-powered games now available on Nintendo Switch 2, such as Cronos: The New Dawn, Fortnite, and Split Fiction, highlighting how all three games do not sport the engine's headline features like Lumen and Nanite. The fact that they are missing in Fortnite, in particular, is rather telling, as it heavily suggests how the engine doesn't yet have a good preset to make an already released game run with these features at acceptable performance on Nintendo's new system. Having a high lower-level barrier to running high-level features like Lumen, Naninte and Virtual Shadow Maps, Cronos: The New Dawn and Borderlands 4, which will only launch on Nintendo Switch 2 next month, struggle to run smoohtly on a CPU like the Ryzen 5 3600, leading to a variety of issues, including traversal stuttering, which would be a lot worse on a slower CPU like the Switch 2's.
How the Nintendo Switch 2 CPU holds back Unreal Engine 5 games is made clearer by how Fortnite runs on the system. As highlighted in the Digital Foundry analysis, there are some sort of "transition zones" used to load new elements into the game, which show some frametime issues that would be significantly worse if the most demanding UE5 features were in. As such, at the current stage, there's likely no way to scale down these features to a level the Nintendo Switch 2 could handle them, having been developed with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S specs in mind, especially their CPUs, which are much faster than the Switch 2's. Like in the other consoles' case, it will take some dedicated work and some updates to create a good profile to run games with Lumen and Nanite on Nintendo Switch 2 at acceptable performance.
Although it was suggested before release that the Nintendo Switch 2 CPU shouldn't have been a problem for games, it looks like it is the most challenging aspect of the system, and not only in Unreal Engine 5 games. The state of the Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition Gamescom demo also suggested how the system's CPU is impacting performance significantly, requiring more optimization work to make games run at acceptable, playable framerates.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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