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One of the biggest Nintendo Switch 2 features announced in the run-up to the system's launch was its support for Nvidia's DLSS upscaling technology, promising "10x the graphics performance" of the previous console. But while you normally expect first-party games to offer the best showcase of console-defining features, it seems Nintendo is content to let third-parties make the most of DLSS, because the tech is nowhere to be seen in Mario Kart World or the impending Donkey Kong Bananza.
"The Switch 2 supports technologies such as DLSS, and we've seen them in numerous games," as Digital Foundry's John Linneman says in a tech analysis of Donkey Kong Bananza. "But Nintendo does not take advantage of it at all. Instead, we simply have this combination of AMD's FSR1 with SMAA, a post-process anti-aliasing. I'll admit it, the image quality is decent. But seriously, FSR1 again? Come on, Nintendo, we can do better than this."
We've got a big breakdown for you if you need AI upscaling explained, but the basic idea is that the console renders a low-resolution version of the game with improved performance, and that render is then upscaled to a higher resolution through a separate technology. In an ideal situation, you might get the smooth performance of running a game at 1080p combined with the visual detail of a native 4K image.
DLSS uses specialized hardware for upscaling in one of the rare useful applications of AI tech. FSR1 is hardware agnostic - in fact, it even worked on Switch 1 - and as a result, produces far less impressive results. Linneman notes that in DK Bananza, the FSR1 and SMAA combo still has a fair bit of visual noise, which DLSS likely wouldn't have produced.
I'll admit that I took absolutely no notice of any visual issues while playing through the game for our Donkey Kong Bananza review, but I have to wonder if DLSS might have also helped clean up the frame rate issues that I did find distracting. Both Mario Kart World and DK Bananza started life as Switch 1 games, which may explain why they've each got a foot in the technological past, so I hope Nintendo's future first-party titles can take a bit better advantage of Switch 2's new features.
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