Compatibility
Performance issues
What makes a game heavy on the Switch, how the loader marks it, and what you can do.
On this page
The Switch is a ~1 GHz Cortex-A57 with a GPU whose largest texture is 4096×4096, and video is decoded in software. Most visual novels are light, but video-heavy games and very large images are not.
How a game gets marked
When it imports a game, the importer checks every image and video it can read, loose or inside a standard .rpa, and writes what it found to performance.issues in the manifest. The loader then:
- puts an amber
!on the game’s cover; - shows the number of issues under the focused game in the Row layout;
- lists up to three of them on the details page.
A game with performance issues still launches. The marks are a warning, not a refusal.
The findings
| Finding | What you can do |
|---|---|
| Video above 30 fps | Import again with --optimize: it re-encodes those videos at 30 fps, same size, same codec family |
| Video above 1280×720 or 1920×1080 | Nothing automatic: a smaller file would show smaller on screen. Expect stutter |
| HEVC or AV1 video | Nothing automatic. These are the most expensive codecs to decode in software |
| Image above 4096 px on a side | It may not display |
| Locked archive | Its assets were not checked. The importer does not open archives in non-standard formats |
The details of each check are on Checks and statuses.
Keeping the console cool
The power saver caps a game at 30 fps.
note
Smooth video playback has not been verified on hardware, and the runtime’s FFmpeg codec list has not been confirmed on the console.