Assassin & # 39; s Creed runs on the Nintendo Switch? One of the most surprising announcements of this week's Nintendo Direct live broadcast was the arrival of the next installment of the AAA stealth action series by Ubisoft, Assassin & # 39; s Creed: Odyssey .
Maybe you think how did he handle that? The main criticism that still adheres to the Nintendo hybrid console is the lack of graphic power and the difficulty of moving the AAA games found in the most powerful consoles of PS4 and Xbox console.
Editors like Bethesda have done a great job of reducing demanding titles so they can execute the lower specifications of the Switch, with successful ports of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Doom, and Doom : Eternal will join the list in 2019.
But it seems that Nintendo avoids these obstacles even more when looking at the cloud.
Leap of faith
Set in ancient Greece, Odyssey is the eleventh main entry in the series Assassin & Creight whose level launch will take place on October 5 on PC, Xbox One and PS4. Players in Japan, however, will have the option of transmitting the game to their Switch – allowing Internet supervision – overcoming the physical limitations of the console.
The switch can only run at 720p on the handheld, and at maximum 1080p resolution when it is docked and played through a television or monitor. So, even if the Nintendo servers take the brunt of the effort, this is a very small version as you look at it.
There will be no Assassin & # 39; s Creed cartridges or floating download files, but it does open possibilities for wider access to AAA titles through the Nintendo console.
We saw a similar release in May of Resident Evil: Biohazard that was available to broadcast online for switch owners, again, only in Japan. But the addition of Assassin's Creed points to some kind of long-term strategy, and it makes sense to test the cloud capabilities for the console in Nintendo territory, given the country's highest average Internet speeds.
With the competition looking for more and more games in the cloud to reduce manufacturing costs and tempt players with a Netflix-style streaming service, Nintendo seems to be moving in the same direction.
Cloud Head
Cloud games have been floating for some years, with some attempts proving to be more successful than others. But both Nvidia GeForce Now and Playstation Now offer a way to transmit AAA games, with clear intentions to focus more on this style of play in the future.
Rumor has it that Xbox plans a gaming machine only in the cloud, Xbox Scarlett Cloud for release in 2020, which could rule out the drive and the high-end processor to focus on the game based on the cloud and make a cheaper console alternative to the main line Xbox Scarlett / Xbox Two .
Despite the runaway success of Switch, Nintendo has been a bit cautious on the subject of online functionality. The paid service of Nintendo Switch Online will finally be released this month, a total of 18 months after the console first hit the market, and we're still not entirely sure what the final product will be like.
But there is a strategy that recognizes the increasing change to the online game. The Nintendo long-term virtual console has been eliminated in favor of a monthly subscription service that allows you to access retro games, and it is not difficult to imagine this expansion to include a game-style download service for more modern Nintendo titles. or third-party publisher ports.
When you consider the smaller scale and less demanding specifications of most Nintendo titles, and the reduced versions of third-party games, they are made to be played on a handheld, after all, Nintendo could be well located to launch your own broadcast service, one that does not need to match a 4K screen or require almost the same amount of data to play in the cloud.
So it seems like the first days for Mario's House, but if the company can already perform limited AAA cloud games at home, it's only a matter of time before it expands further.
- Nintendo Switch Online will launch on September 18, but what's included with the service?