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A gaming masterpiece and a brilliant debut title for Nintendo Switch, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is also a tough technical workout, so just how well does it perform? Owing to lack of code up until now, we've only just started the Wii U work but analysis of the Switch game is fascinating in its own right. It shows us how a cutting edge title scales between Switch's mobile and docked configurations, and there are some surprising results.A potential series of differentials first came to light in a GameXplain video posted last week - the commenter notes that the portable performance of the game is smoother than its docked presentation. However, observers noted that the camera footage taken from the handheld screen seemed to reveal a simplified lighting model and shadow changes. Had Nintendo traded visual features to accommodate Switch's reduced GPU clocks?
Comparing the docked Switch experience with the output of the handheld display isn't easy. Right now, there's no way to capture direct feed from the mobile screen, so yes - in our comparison, we're using a camera shot too. However, for comparison shots, we've used Switch's screenshot tool to extract direct feed quality images (note to Nintendo: a PNG option would be welcome, the JPEG compression sucks). We compare these to shots taken from 1080p captures from the hardware's HDMI output. Interestingly, internal screenshots taken when docked are downscaled to 720p, even if the game itself operates at a higher resolution. Zelda, of course, runs at 900p when attached to an HDTV.
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