The versatility and convenience of the aren't 🧔the only reasons players want all of their favorite games ported onto the handheld console. Did you know that, without a single graphical upgrade,🌌 games on Switch just look better?
I'm not talking about new games of course. Side-by-side comparisons of DOOM 2016, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Wolfenstein 2: The New Order clearly show that Switch isn't nearly as powerful as the PS4 and Xbox One. But that's a performance i༺ssue, the Switch doesn't have the processing power to render textures and det🎀ails in current-gen games nearly as well as the other consoles.
Where the Switch truly shines is🔯 when it comes to ports of older games. It may seem counterintuitive, considering the Switch only has a 1280x720 display. To understand why games look better on the Switch, consider both the size of the screen and its pixel density.
What Is Pixel Density?
A screen's resolution is the total number of pixels that can be 📖displayed on the screen. The Switch's 1280x720 display means that it has a 1280-pixel width and a 720-pixel height. This is a 16:9 aspect ratio, otherwise known as widescreen.
Pixel Density is literally how densely packed the pixels are. Pixel Density is measure in pixels-per-inch (PPI) and, for small scr🌄eens like phones and ꦛthe Switch, describes the image quality much better than the resolution can. The higher the PPI, the clearer and sharper the image is.
The "resolution" (in this case 1280x720) is really just the imaꦦge format of the screen. It communicates what the scale of the picture and the signal format the scrౠeen can display (in this case, 720p), but a 1280x720 resolution doesn't say anything about the image quality, the Pixel Density does.
The higher a screen's pixel-per-inch, the smaller the pixels. and thus the closer they are 𓆏together, making a clearer, more detailed picture. The Switch has a 236.87 PPI on it's 6.2" screen, while the Switch Lite has a 267 PPI on it's smaller 5.5" screen.
Higher PPI = Improved Graphics
Take any old pre-HD game ෴that was created for a 720x480 resolution and watch how it instantly gets an upgrade. It 🌳isn't any kind of technical marvel, the size of the screen simply shrinks images down, naturally making them look sharper and clearer.
Any HD remake/remaster takes a lot of time and resources to make. Whether the developers fully reanimate the entire game like Spyro Reignited Trilogy or a facelift like the recent Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remaster, updating a game is no small task. A port, on the other hand, can be relatively simple to do. While HD Remasters modernize games for new audiences and often🔯 add quality-of-life features that improve the game, the fact that even basic ports look improved on the Switch is part of the reason these ports are so successful.
It's also the reason so many games are constantly getting pඣorted to the Switch. It's impossible to count, but it seems as though for every new game that launches on the Switch there are five old games releasing on the console for the first time. It has proven to be an easy way to get players who already own the game to doubl꧃e-dip, and many games feel like brand new experiences on the Switch because of the portability, but it certainly doesn't hurt that older games look a lot better on the Switch than they ever did on consoles and PC, no matter how big and bright your TV was.