It would be hilarious if the emulator they were using was Ryujinx or Yuzu.
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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They made their own emulator for N64 on NSO that performs worse than the FOSS ones in a variety of ways so previously they've not done this.
I think it’d be much easier for Nintendo to reference their own documentation. They have API docs, schematics, everything any emulator developer salivates over but can’t use for legal reasons. But who knows, it could be a part of the settlement deal even.
Why don't emulator coders use the illegal docs since they are going to be treated like criminals anyway?
Because they still think they aren't and want to pretend they aren't, they believe the law is on their side and they don't have it in them to lie to a court and/or falsify evidence that they did do it "clean room" and betray the law which they believe is on their side. Even though it actually isn't and probably never unless people get fed up enough to do what's necessary.
Well, one of the most respected Nintendo console emulators around, Dolphin, was developed in a clean room environment despite documentation being available due to leaks for this precise reason. To this day they’ve been undisturbed by Nintendo so that seems to be working alright.
It helps that they arent emulating a current generation. It thus makes it harder for nintendo to screech 'piracy' when the media is largely out of print.
The list of games that aren't running well or at all is at least very small, so it's not much of a worry anyways. Only game I own that is on the list is Doom Eternal and I can play that handheld on Steam Deck now. Well, Rocket League too, but I'm sure Epic will release a better native version for Switch 2.
That sentence intrigues me
we did something that’s somewhere in between a software emulator and hardware compatibility
What do they emulate vs. what was added in hardware to ensure compatibility?
I'm sure it's the games that are emulated, while all the security bullshit is what is actually dedicated hardware.
We won't know for sure what's actually going on under the hood until the console is cracked wide open or there's a devkit leak, but my speculative guess is that some details of the GPU are 'emulated'/recompiled. PC AAA games tend to include lengthy shader pre-compilation wait times, console games don't have that wait time because the shaders are pre-compiled by the developers when building the game, specifically for one piece of hardware. The games themselves then fully rely on those pre-compiled shaders. They're going to need shaders that work with the Switch 2's GPU, which is going to involve some kind of imperfect translation process.
AMD was able to design better hardware that works with older compiled shaders, as done in the PS5/Xbox Series (and Pro consoles). That's not a super common feature, but I imagine that AMD is more motivated to keep Microsoft/Sony happy than Nvidia is to keep Nintendo happy. AMD's graphics division might as well shut their doors if it wasn't for the consoles, meanwhile Nvidia is raking in trillions from the AI boom and would rather forget about gaming.
I imagine that AMD is more motivated to keep Microsoft/Sony happy than Nvidia is to keep Nintendo happy.
I don't think it's about making anyone happy, it's about feasibility. From NVidia's point of view, the first Switch was a throw-away project made up of already way outdated components. They literally just gave them the then currently in development NVidia Shield Tablet (meant for PC game streaming and Android apps) and let Nintendo stick the controllers to the side and port their 3DS operating system over. It was cobbled together to have a Wii U replacement relatively quickly.
Adding transistors for hardware-level backwards compatibility probably has more downsides on a portable console than benefits.
We won’t know the details for some time probably. Typically that would be running most CPU instructions natively or in a hypervisor (because it’s some ARM on both - that’s how Ryujinx on ARM Mac works) but mapping API calls to new libraries (like Wine does on Linux).
Something I was wondering about. Modern Vintage Gamer (YouTuber / developer for Nightdive studios / appears on Nate the Hare podcast) said it would be very tricky to run Switch games on any other hardware due to multiple quirks that are way beyond me. He even speculated that it wouldn’t surprise him if Switch successor wouldn’t run Switch games. I guess this is some answer to that speculation. This is also part of the reason why Switch 2 seems to be fairly powerful - they didn’t need that much hardware compatibility so they weren’t constrained by architecture that much.
This is also part of the reason why Switch seems to be fairly powerful
Say what? In what world? The chip was already like 5 years old when Switch came out.
Meant Switch 2 obviously :) Corrected.
One has to admit Switch 2 games look pretty great, especially for a mobile device that’s quite thin. Battery life is at early Switch levels however which is probably what Nintendo decided to sacrifice as a tradeoff for fitting it into certain budget.
I don't know. A lot of games seem to run fine on my PC.
You aren't 'running' them per se, you are emulating them, which removes the hardware hurdle.
How do you run something on other hardware without emulation?
Natively. This is what this post and the comment you replied to are about. People expected the switch 2 to run switch 1 games natively, just like the wii ran GameCube natively or Gameboy advance ran Gameboy games but instead it's emulated.
So is this the same thing as the PS3 and PS4?
Was that emulator ever jailbroken to run other games? I thought it used some bespoke per-game config so it’s not as general as the Switch one appears to be. Nintendo compatibility list shows a very good coverage too.
I’m not sure all ik is you can’t download ps3 games only stream them on ps4 due to different hardware
Ah, and I was thinking of PS2 emulator they use for classics in PS+ :D
Switch 2 backwards compatibility won’t be streaming-based, it runs locally.
I misunderstood then...really hated how Sony did things where the PS3 really had no backwards compatibiliy with PS2 and PS4 couldn't play Ps3 games.
Sounds like this is closer to Apple's Rosetta to make up for their ARM transition.
Rosetta is full emulation. This sounds more like a hypervisor.