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Nintendo Switch Sports is an entry in the Wii Sports and Wii series in general, for the Nintendo Switch system, released on April 29, 2022. It is a sequel to Wii Sports Club which retains several sports from each. It also has several new sports. While the Mii characters are no longer the main characters in the game, they are still playable as an alternative option. It is the first Wii series game released internationally not to have the "Wii" prefix in its logo.
Gameplay
As with previous Sports entries, the game is a compilation of various sports, and players can create and play as their in-game avatars (or Miis). Also, the sports use motion controls to mimick the actions of the real sport played. A few requires two Joy-Cons. Six sports (listed below) have been made available to play, with an additional sport being planned for a future update for Fall. The Leg Strap compatibility for the Soccer sport will also be included in a later update. All sports support online play. Sports can be choosen from Spocco Square.
Sports
- Tennis
- Bowling
- Chambara (new name for Swordplay)
- Soccer
- Badminton
- Volleyball
- Golf (to be released as free DLC "this fall")
Development
Development of this game started shortly after the Switch's launch with Yoshiaki Koizumi requesting Yamashita to develop a new entry in the Wii Sports series for the Switch. The developers had difficulty deciding what to add to the game since most of what had been achieved in the earlier entries. Additionally, they originally planned to develop the title with the intention of playing without swinging the controller. After years of development, they decided to restart development since they felt they diverged too much from the spirit of the Wii Sports series.[1]
A significant portion of the development team were new to the series and had trouble understanding the different frame of reference for developing a motion-based game. The team also underestimated the difference between the Wii's and Switch's motion controls. The biggest issue was accounting for all the natural motions to perform the actions in the game. One such issue was in volleyball where was that the programmer designer the game to work as if the player was an actual volleyball player, but, players were instinctively swinging their arms to bump the ball, resulting in the ball to fly off in a wild direction. The other sports had similar issues. The eventual solution was found through deep learning with manual final touches for the edge cases.
Resolution and Performance
The majority of the game runs at 60fps. It runs at 30fps at certain occasions, such as during the online loading screen, Spocco Square menu, before and after Bowling matches, etc.
Additionally, the game uses AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution for performance boosting and frame-rate upscaling.[2][3]
