Just in time for Halloween, Capcom has released a duo of titles from its critically acclaimed survival horror series onto the Switch’s library. Yes, Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 have both just dropped on Nintendo’s eShop today, though according to those who have been playing the recently released demos, it’s sounding like the games run pretty poorly on the handheld/hybrid system.
Case in point: Digital Foundry tested out the Resident Evil 5 and 6 demos, and found that both titles have numerous issues on the platform. Essentially, they struggle to maintain a solid framerate on the Switch when the action gets too busy. Interestingly, both games target 30 FPS, but the performance gets choppy in outside areas, especially when there are larger crowds of zombies. Furthermore, the textures on some walls, objects and enemies also look fairly low-res and blurry, especially in docked mode. Apparently, some of these performance issues are less noticeable in handheld mode.
What’s worth noting is that these games – which came out in 2009 and 2012, respectively – Â really shouldn’t be particularly taxing on the Switch’s hardware; the diminutive system can, and has run, much more technically-demanding software without framerate problems like these. That being said, Capcom may’ve simply rushed out these versions for Halloween and not spent enough time developing and optimizing the ports for Switch. Perhaps they could release a patch or an update sometime in the future that would iron out the performance issues? Only time will tell.
While a performance patch hasn’t been confirmed by the publisher, a day one update for the Switch versions of Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 has already been deployed and brings with it gyroscopic and motion controls for both titles. Fingers crossed for a performance update, too.
