Last week, we got our first look at some actual, real Pokémon Legends: Z-A footage. People have seemed pretty split between “we’re so back!” and “it’s so over!” in the days since, but we can all agree that it all looked very ‘Switch 1’, right? Apparently, not everyone thought it was that clean-cut, and some have even started speculating that the footage we saw was actually taken from Switch 2.
We were pretty shocked by mere suggestion that the footage could be from the new hardware and so, it seems, were the tech experts at Digital Foundry, who recently gave their opinions on whether the Z-A gameplay could possibly be from the upcoming system.
We’ll cut right to the chase, it’s a pretty definitive “no” from DF. “This is definitely not Switch 2,” Digital Foundry’s Oliver Mackenzie said in the above chat, citing the footage’s similarities to Scarlet and Violet before concluding, “if this is Switch 2, we’re in some trouble”.
John Linneman agreed, conceding that while the footage looked a lot more solid than the previous mainline entry, it’s far from what we should expect from a next-gen console. “I’m surprised that anybody, anywhere would look at this and say, ‘you think this is Switch 2?’,” Leadbetter commented, “that upsets my whole understanding of what people see in graphics and what they perceive about games”.
And then we have the strategic element of it all. Technology Editor Richard Leadbetter made the less analysis-focused point that there’s no way Nintendo would reveal Switch 2 footage this close to the 2nd April Direct.
We have to admit, we agree. The thought that the Legends: Z-A trailer could be running on Switch 2 had never entered our minds, and we didn’t see anything that made us particularly think, “wow, the Switch 1 could never do that” — in fact, it was closer to “come on, the Switch 1 is capable much better than that”. Sure, some kind of brushed-up Switch 2 release might be on the cards for Z-A in the future, but everything we’ve seen so far pretty definitively seems to be last-gen.
What do you think? Was the Legends: Z-A trailer running on Switch 1 or is there a chance it was next-gen? Let us know in the comments.
