Pokemon fans who have managed to get their hands on Scarlet & Violet early have reported that it has some massive framerate issues in the open world, even when playing on a Switch with the day-one patch installed.
Pokemon Scarlet & Violet look set to dramatically change the established series formula, pushing it towards open-world gameplay in a way we've not seen the mainline series ever do. That ambition has caused a bit of worry amongst fans, however, who have been wondering how the game might perform on the Switch, seeing as how trailers for the game have made it seem like it's struggling a little.
Twitter user toxicradiorr shared a clip on Twitter showing their character exploring in a grassy area of Paldea. When the player characters start running down a grassy hill, the framerate can be seen dropping far below 30fps for a few seconds, slowing down everything in the area. It's not clear what causes the framerate to be hit so hard, but it's presumably because of the town being loaded in the distance.
Alongside the clip, toxicradiorr said, "Slowdowns and FPS drops PRESENT when walking down hills in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet on Native Hardware, Switch V1 w/ Day 1 Patch. Nintendo & GameFreak need to address these optimization issues ASAP." Although Scarlet & Violet isn't officially out yet, pre-loading for it became available earlier in the week, which seems to have made the day one patch available to download for some.
Twitter user CentroLeaks also shared a now-deleted video that claims that someone was able to overclock a hacked version of Scarlet & Violet, which actually lets it stay at a stable 30fps. Obviously that won't be an option for Switch players, but it does seem to indicate that more powerful hardware doesn't have as much of a tough time keeping the game going as the Switch seemingly does.
This isn't the first video to pop up on Twitter over the last week showing off Scarlet & Violet's framerate issues, although it's noteworthy as being the first to come from Switch hardware and with the day-one patch installed, rather than an emulated version of the game.