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It seems at least one version of battle royale shooter Fortnite isn’t making too many fans – as an increasing number of glitches, bugs and graphical issues are starting to take their toll on the userbase.
Over on the Fortnite subreddit, a user by the name of Accomplished-One6774 has posted a video that includes awful texture pop-in on the older console – with at one point a poorly rendered texture popping in right in front of their view as they’re trying to shoot at someone. They claim that this glitch caused them to die and ended their game prematurely. “Evidently, it can’t handle the game,” says fizziepanda – in a response with more than 107 upvotes at the time of writing. “I’ve had similar happen to me before,” chimes in FloppyDisk_69. “Sometimes landing too close to trees makes the tree branch graphic get stuck to the camera. Not sure exactly what’s going on but when it takes up the whole field of view it can be frustrating.”
“I play on the Switch and still have a ton of fun – but yeah, it feels like I’m playing with DBZ training weights on,” remarks deadbeatPilgrim. It’s a sentiment shared by many, who point out that the Switch console is over seven years old at this point. “I’ve been playing on my Switch and haven’t had issues, graphics are poor but I expect that as the hardware is low spec,” says cpmb82. Over Fortnite’s lifespan, it’s improved its graphics as it’s moved to new versions of the Unreal engine. However, as it does so, it seems the strain is being felt more on older hardware such as the Switch. “You’ve really got to give them credit,” ZainullahK writes. “They’re running an Unreal Engine 5 title on a device with the power of a weakish phone from 2015.”
Of course, Fortnite has dropped support for older platforms such as Windows 7 previously, but there’d be a lot more pushback, we’d assume, should they retire the Switch version of the game – at least before a rumoured Switch 2 is released. Hopefully in the meantime Epic games can iron out the glitches so that Nintendo Switch owners can still play the game as intended for as long as possible.
For more on Fortnite, check out our Best Graphic Settings for Fortnite on PC to boost performance or our guide to the best graphic settings for Fortnite on PS5.