The rumored Nintendo Switch Pro might use a new graphic chip to allow games to reach a 4K resolution on the console. Even if the launch of the Nintendo Switch Pro has not officially been confirmed yet, a new report from Bloomberg details how Nintendo intends to achieve a higher resolution while still maintaining the competitive price of their consoles - one of the biggest reasons for their recent success in the gaming market.
The new console generation can support native 4K resolution, meaning games that run on the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S can use graphic resources which were planned and built to fill up 4K screens. There’s a huge difference between the new generation and the Switch, which can only reach 720p in handheld mode, and a maximum of 1080p while docked and connected to a TV. For the Nintendo Switch Pro to offer 4K, Nintendo would have to invest big in the graphic upgrades, which could make the Pro model too expensive to be competitive.
According to Bloomberg, the solution to this issue comes from a partnership between Nintendo and Nvidia, in order to use the revolutionary DLSS technology from the manufacturer of graphic cards. So far, the DLSS technology is Nvidia’s Geforce RTX 20 and RTX 30, and is capable of reproducing games that run in a low resolution as they were being displayed in a higher resolution. This is not a simple stretching effect, since the DLSS technology uses Artificial Intelligence to analyze thousands of hours of gameplay for each individual game, in order to better predict how to fill the gap between the pixels that are being shown on the screen.
More potent hardware allows Nintendo to sell a bigger selection of third-party games, especially titles launched in the last couple of years. Since the Switch doesn’t support high resolutions, new-generation games need to stay out of the console or build special ports. This worked like a charm with Doom Eternal, for instance, but it’s extra development time and money that not every game developer is ready to spend. The need to build a special version means a delay of months or years between the release of a new game and its arrival on the Switch. The DLSS technology can help Nintendo to circumvent these issues, and increase the life-span of the Switch as a viable console. Nintendo usually avoids announcing a product until its ready to be released, but with new reports about the Nintendo Switch Pro emerging more frequently, the existence of the fabled model is starting to gain weight. We already received news about the possible bigger screen for the Nintendo Switch Pro, and if a 4K resolution really becomes available, that would mean games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey could gain a new level of detail in the future.