After a very long wait, gamers have finally gotten to enjoy Hogwarts Legacy. Fortunately, it has received great reviews, and it is already breaking records on Steam. Some gamers haven’t been able to enjoy the game just yet, as the last-generation and Switch versions have been delayed. There is reason to be quite skeptical about how the game will run on the Switch, as it has proven to be a resource-intensive title on PC and current-gen consoles.
There are a few tricks that Avalanche Software could use to get Hogwarts Legacy running on the Switch. Scaling things down, lowering the resolution of some textures, and decreasing the draw distance would help. However, there is only so much that can be done. It will be interesting to see whether developers will overcome the limitations of the Switch, or whether the port will end up struggling to run on the hybrid console.
Hogwarts Legacy Is Massive
Hogwarts Legacy takes place within Hogwarts castle, and players are free to explore it as they desire. When they do, it proves to be quite an expansive location filled with plenty of secrets to discover. Furthermore, players can venture beyond the walls of the castle to visit Hogsmeade village. These locations are rendered beautifully, making it very easy to get immersed in the magical world. Historically, open-world games have struggled the most on the Switch. They are resource-intense games which test the Switch's hardware, and while franchises like The Legend of Zelda manage to pull it off, there are several examples of games that don't.
This has been the case with The Outer Worlds, which manages to run on the Switch but at the cost of a poor framerate and terrible graphical quality that makes the game nearly unplayable. This is a disappointment, as it is brilliant when played on a PC or console. This doesn’t apply to third-party games alone, as gamers recently experienced plenty of technical issues with Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. Even if Hogwarts Legacy can run on the Switch, it could wind up meeting the same fate as The Outer Worlds, and it may be heavily crippled by poor performance.
Can Hogwarts Legacy on the Switch Be Saved?
Despite the monumental challenge ahead, Avalanche Software does not seem deterred. In an interview, Troy Johnson, who is one of the designers, stated that the game will be beautiful and faithful to the studio’s idea. It is hard to imagine how this will be achieved, though Avalanche Software has already exceeded expectations, and it may do it yet again. If it manages to deliver a quality product, it will certainly go a long way toward pacifying gamers who were upset by the delay of some versions of Hogwarts Legacy.
One of the ways developers could overcome the Switch’s technical limitations is by utilizing cloud-based gaming. This has been the strategy utilized by a few other contemporary AAA games that wish to run on the Switch. This includes A Plague Tale: Requiem, a game that would have certainly not run natively on the hybrid console, as it already struggled on current-gen consoles when there are thousands of rats on-screen. While this would help Hogwarts Legacy a great deal, current signs don’t indicate that the game will be cloud-based.
Judging by the massive waves Hogwarts Legacy made at launch, it has a good chance of being one of the bestselling games of the year. This could ultimately lead to the development of new Hogwarts Legacy games. By that time, hopefully there is a Switch successor out that can handle more demanding games.
Hogwarts Legacy is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. PS4 and Xbox One ports are scheduled to release on April 4, whereas the Nintendo Switch version is arriving July 25, 2023.
