After over two years of waiting, Switch 2 owners will get to play Stellar Blade sometime this year. Although we're still without a release date, developer Shift Up has revealed some of the technical details behind the port, including that it's using Nvidia's upscaling technology.
Speaking to Nintendo Everything, DongKi Lee, the CTO and technical director of Shift Up, broke down the studio's goals and approach. "We targeted 60 frames per second in both handheld mode and docked mode," he says.
"And actually, one unique method that we use is that, as you are very well aware, Switch 2 supports Nvidia's DLSS," he continues. "We use that to upscale, but it doesn’t have any features for frame generation."
The footage in the latest trailer for the Switch 2 version is in 60fps, and that's the intention for how it'll run. Nvidia's tech runs in combination with an entirely separate technology to make it all work.
"What we did was we take AMD's FSR 3.1 for PC and used the feature called frame interpolation to achieve the target for 60 frames per second," he comments. "We use DLSS for upscaling, and then took the result we got and used frame interpolation from FSR 3.1 to be able to target 60 frames per second."
When it was first introduced, DLSS was a fairly uncontroversial upscaling technique, using machine learning techniques to make games appear sharper without compromising on performance. By the time Switch 2 was confirmed to support DLSS, it had already become an essential tool for PC gamers.
But Nvidia has continued to shove more and more AI-driven features under the DLSS banner. Features like frame generation always had some detractors, but DLSS 5's implementation of awful-looking AI filters is earning an extensive backlash.
DLSS 5 is not supported on Switch 2, and that's probably for the best. I shudder to think of how this might look for Eve, the game's protagonist, but we'll cross that AI-powered bridge when we get to it.
Regardless, it's all in line with Shift Up's distinctly AI-positive MO. Earlier this year, the studio's CEO said he believes it's necessary for South Korean game development to compete on a global scale, and let's not forget that AI music video for Stellar Blade: Blood Rain. Oh, dear.
