With Capcom’s Monster Hunter: Wilds launching later this week, Digital Foundry has completed its usual tech wizardry and analysed the performance for the series’ latest flagship title.
Truth be told, it’s made us a bit worried about a potential Switch 2 port. Now, we should preface this by clarifying that we still don’t officially know how capable the Switch 2 will be, but judging from the bevy of leaks and subsequent analyses on the tech specs, we’re likely looking at a console that can potentially stand toe-to-toe with the PS4 Pro, albeit with some cheeky DLSS upscaling thrown in for good measure.
Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Capcom is likely to skip a Switch 2 port altogether, but we think it’s important that we keep our expectations in check as to how the game might perform on the upcoming console. Looking at the Xbox Series S version specifically, DF notes that there’s only one performance option available targeting 30fps (with optional unlocked frame rate provided you have a compatible display).
In addition, it also looks significantly worse on the Series S than on the Series X or PS5. There’s no SSR (screen space reflection) whatsoever and textures can look muddy across the board. Resolution is maxed out at 1080p and even the UI weathers a sizable downgrade from 4K to 1080p.
Even with these cut-backs, however, the game frequently drops below 30fps on the Series S, sometimes to as low as 25fps, and DF states that even unlocking the frame rate yields very little improvement.
With the rumoured inclusion of DLSS upscaling to 4K, it’s certainly possible that the Switch 2 might actually outpace the Series S in some regards, so it seems likely that we’ll probably see Monster Hunter: Wilds on the console at some point in the future. In terms of frame rate and features such as SSR, however, we might have to make do with the absolute minimum.
It’s worth noting that Capcom never bothered to port Monster Hunter: World over to the Switch given the huge leap in graphical quality, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see this entry make its way to the Switch 2 before the developer even begins to think about porting Wilds. We’ll have to wait and see!
