Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have made headlines by running poorly on the Nintendo Switch. While plenty of players have managed to overlook the performance issues to have a great time with the games, it's still rather abysmal as low frame rates, glitches, and graphical issues hurt the game's immersion at almost any given point.
However, the overall opinion on how Pokemon Scarlet and Violet perform has been changing, as many of these issues have been proven to be improved when the Nintendo Switch is overclocked. "Overclocking" means that players have managed to hack their device and control its processing power to run at max capacity. Nintendo has made it so that the Switch can't run at these speeds normally to help preserve the overall health of the system. Yet, it begs the question as to why Scarlet and Violet's many issues shrink with higher processing power.
How Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Are Optimized
Despite these Pokemon games suffering from some rather severe issues, it's not from a lack of trying. Many different techniques are implemented to keep the game running as smooth as it can. One of these methods was also used in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, where far away Pokemon were at a slower frame rate and were scaled up upon being brought closer to players. However, Scarlet and Violet seems to be unable to handle all the models used, and that leads to things like classrooms of 3 FPS students.
Hackers have also managed to find that the direction the camera is facing determines what part of the world is loaded. For example, players in Casseroya Lake only have the lake that they see on the screen loaded into the world, with the other half unloaded. However, the distance draw of the body of water makes it that all the shapes in the distance are loaded in, as well, which may be why the lake is one of the worst performing areas in the game. It feels like Game Freak overshot just how much the Switch could handle with regard to its scope for Scarlet and Violet.
Why Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Run Better on an Overclocked Switch
These optimization features scale with how the Switch's CPU and GPU run at a rate less than they would regularly. This is because Nintendo cares about making sure that games perform the same way that they do when docked as they would in handheld mode. Due to this, the chip inside the Nintendo Switch is underclocked at all times. Meaning, when players make their way through Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, they aren't playing it at the highest performance already.
Having the settings as low as they are by default still gives decent performance with other Switch games without the console overheating in either mode. This makes fans question why overclocking the system erases most, if not all, of Scarlet and Violet's performance issues. One theory fans have is that Scarlet and Violet were tested on overclocked platforms, and it was this version that was okayed for release either with or without realizing that it would perform so terribly without the higher CPU and GPU.
However, Nintendo would have needed a reason to allow a game to be developed beyond the Switch's current capabilities. Fans have speculated that either a Switch 2 or Switch Pro was or is currently in development, and that was the device Pokemon Scarlet and Violet were being tested on. This would make sense for a number of reasons, and the fact that a Pokemon employee has listed "experience with next-generation hardware" on their resume almost acts as evidence towards this. The current chip shortages due to Covid-19 may have kept this console from being released in time for Scarlet and Violet's launch.
While there may be some evidence to back up this claim, all of it still boils down to just being fan speculation. After all, Switch 2 and Switch Pro rumors have been circulating among fans and supposed leakers as early as 2019. Nintendo has also dismissed many of these rumors in its own press statements, which means this overclocked benchmark may simply show that Scarlet and Violet have the potential, but not the resources to perform as intended.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are available now for Nintendo Switch.
