Donkey Kong Bananza among Switch 2 games with no DLSS support — reviewers balk at Nintendo's aversion to technology

News
By published

More monkey business in the world of Nintendo.

Donkey Kong Bananza
(Image credit: Nintendo)

One of the most notable features of the Nintendo Switch 2 that has many in the gaming community intrigued is its Nvidia DLSS support. Nvidia's AI-powered tech has long been the 800-pound gorilla of upscaling, and it seems especially useful on a console with limited graphics horsepower like the Switch 2.

Despite the fact that DLSS is in the Switch 2 developer's toolkit, however, it's becoming apparent that the technology isn't being universally adopted among devs.

Donkey Kong Bananza - Nintendo Switch 2 - Digital Foundry Review - YouTube Donkey Kong Bananza - Nintendo Switch 2 - Digital Foundry Review - YouTube
Watch On

It's also worth pointing out that we reported performance issues earlier this week from Switch 2 developers who are warning users ahead of time to expect some performance drops in Donkey Kong Bananza.

Bananza has been in production for several years, which might be why it's not built to support DLSS. That said, it appears to provide more than adequate graphics using AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR 1) along with Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing (or more simply SMAA), which, as the name suggests, reduces aliasing.

Another big title game that caught our attention in its lack of DLSS support is Mario Kart World. We expected Nintendo's flagship games to be leaders in implementing all of the Switch 2's capabilities, but DLSS is apparently off the table for some. We were disappointed even to learn that Mario Kart World developers failed to properly implement real HDR support.

Time will tell if more developers jumped on the DLSS train or not. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is a highly anticipated upcoming title that might take advantage of Nvidia's DLSS. However, this has yet to be confirmed, so we're not 100% clear what to expect out of this release, either.


Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.

Ash Hill
Ash Hill
Contributing Writer

Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jrharbort
    Historically speaking, games that make the absolute best of a new console platform never arrive at launch. It's only after some years of experience and optimization that we start to see games that truly push the console to its limits.
    Reply
  • Notton
    AFAIK, the devs? nintendo? said DK Bonanza was released on Switch 2 because the OG Switch couldn't handle what the game was asking.
    So, not entirely surprising it doesn't have DLSS baked in, but then you also have to remember...
    Switch 2's hardware was already finalized and taped out around 2021~2022. Nintendo was sitting on inventory for 2+ years before they bothered doing anything with it.
    The devs had at least 3 years to get it working, so no excuses, just low effort.
    Reply
  • fiyz
    Why do we need low fidelity frame generation and upscaling again?

    Are we trying to clear up internal data bus to be utilized by 8K advertisements that I'm forced to download?
    Reply
  • John Nemesh
    fiyz said:
    Why do we need low fidelity frame generation and upscaling again?

    Are we trying to clear up internal data bus to be utilized by 8K advertisements that I'm forced to download?
    Mainly to compensate for the fact that the APU in this thing is a potato....
    Reply
  • bigdragon
    Nintendo has learned nothing from all the mistakes Game Freak has made with the Pokemon games. This is disappointing. DK Bananza should be delayed until the performance issues are ironed out. We need to stop allowing publishers to kick games out unfinished to meet quarterly investor report deadlines. I miss the days when Nintendo couldn't easily patch their games and finish them later.
    Reply
  • watzupken
    John Nemesh said:
    Mainly to compensate for the fact that the APU in this thing is a potato....
    The APU in the Switch 2 is not weak as you think it is. The reason why it cannot perform well is because of the focus on low power draw. For context, the Ampere iGPU comes with 3x the number of processing units than what’s on the RDNA 2 iGPU found on the Steam Deck. It’s just lowly clocked on the GPU and memory especially when in handheld mode. The ARM processors are probably the weakest link on the Switch 2.

    As for why DKB did not use DLSS, I think it may be the timing and the fact that the game engine is proprietary to Nintendo and not optimized for DLSS for ease of implementation. Given that there is a severe lack of games on the Switch 2 at launch, I guess the decision is to push DKB out ASAP as it’s running ok.
    Reply