After years of waiting, Metroid Prime 4 Beyond gameplay is finally here, and it looks fantastic. In fact, Metroid Prime 4’s debut gameplay looks so good that many, including ourselves, believe it looks too good for the original Nintendo Switch.
Despite widely known Switch 2 specs, Nintendo has yet to officially confirm the upcoming console. We have our own Nintendo Switch 2 launch games wishlist, but not a single title has been confirmed for the new machine.
Technical experts at Digital Foundry confirm that Metroid Prime 4 Beyond’s stunning gameplay runs on the current Nintendo Switch. Eagle-eyed viewers can spot multiple signs proving it isn’t running on Switch 2.
Speaking to IGN, Digital Foundry’s Richard Leadbetter explained why the game isn’t running on Nintendo’s next-generation handheld.
"It's looking great... but ultimately, all the evidence points to this game running on the original Switch,” he said. “The internal rendering resolution counts out at 900p, which is the same as Metroid Prime Remastered. And as good as it is, there are some aliasing issues and even some very minor frame-rate drops. Everything about the visual make-up is consistent with a really well-made Switch game."
Announced alongside titles like Mario and Luigi Brothership, Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and Super Mario Party Jamboree, Metroid Prime 4 certainly looks a step above its contemporaries. However, this is merely due to the sheer technical wizardry its developers have managed to cook up. While the game could certainly see some graphical downgrades before its 2025 release, it’s already shaping up to be a technical stunner on Switch.
The most exciting news about Metroid Prime 4’s gameplay running on Switch isn’t that it pushes the new hardware to its absolute limit, but what it means for the actual Switch 2. With Switch 2 capable of hardware-accelerated ray-tracing, DLSS, and much-improved rendering, the new Nintendo handheld is going to drop jaws with the fidelity of its games.