Nintendo Switch 2 GameChat Unexpectedly Boosts Performance in Capcom RE Engine Games

New testing reveals Nintendo Switch 2 GameChat can significantly improve frame rates in several Capcom RE Engine games.

A few Capcom games perform better with the chat system on, which is a pretty surprising piece of news about the Nintendo Switch 2’s GameChat feature that’s circulating. Seems the odd behavior is affecting games that use the RE Engine tech. This approach is employed in a handful of well-known Capcom games for Nintendo’s latest hardware.

Capcom has become one of the biggest third-party supporters of the Nintendo Switch 2 since its launch back in November. The publisher has already released a number of highly challenging games for the console, showcasing what the updated Nintendo hardware can do.

Resident Evil Requiem, Monster Hunter Stories 3, Pragmata, and other planned releases for the console's first year all use the RE engine. People have said the RE Engine is highly scalable across a wide range of hardware setups. Capcom's engine has consistently delivered outstanding optimization results across powerful consoles, PCs, and portable devices.

However, new reports indicate that the engine and the Nintendo Switch 2’s built-in GameChat feature may work in an unexpected way. Before the console came out, Nintendo is said to have told developers that GameChat could slightly slow down speed because it uses more system resources and RAM when voice communication is active.

Developers were told to ensure their games ran smoothly both while playing and in GameChat. The feature seems to work fine with most games, but some analysts cited a study showing that RE Engine games behave differently in certain situations. In some situations, speed can actually go up, leading to more noticeable frame rates.

Smaller GameChat windows on the Nintendo Switch 2 can greatly boost frame rates.

How players set up the GameChat display layout has a big impact on the speed boost. Nintendo Switch 2 users can change the size of the game screens while using GameChat, switching between full-screen and smaller display modes. Testing showed that some RE Engine games achieve surprisingly large frame rate gains when gameplay is displayed in a smaller window during GameChat sessions.

The results showed that frame rates can increase by up to 20 frames per second in some cases, compared to normal gameplay with GameChat off. The speed boost seems to be related to the smaller gameplay display size, which means less rendering work, allowing the hardware to focus more on keeping things running smoothly. However, if you are a gamer who puts a lot of stock in visual immersion.

It may not be worth the price. There are still plenty of people who like to play games in full-screen mode, especially when it comes to games like Resident Evil: Requiem, where the setting and presentation are very important to the overall experience. Still, the result is a really weird technical issue that has sparked a lot of discussion among Nintendo and Capcom fans.

Normally, this would hurt overall performance. But GameChat appears to let certain engine optimizations perform better as rendering demands decrease. Some players may not like the idea of reducing the game window just to get a better framerate. Capcom's RE Engine keeps surprising players with its amazing scalability on Nintendo Switch 2.

The results also contribute to Capcom’s increasing reputation for producing Nintendo ports that work very well.

The publisher has been consistently saying since the release of the Switch 2 that future games will have better support for Nintendo hardware. Plenty of fans are already expecting more big Capcom games to hit the platform soon, and Monster Hunter Wilds may even make the leap to Nintendo devices down the line.

At the same time, this shows how hard it is for developers to find the right balance with system-level features like GameChat. Background communication tools always use up memory and processing power, making it harder for developers working on demanding current games to achieve the best performance.

Still, the fact that players might be able to get better frame rates by simply moving a GameChat window is still one of the strangest technical features found on Nintendo Switch 2 so far. More developers are experimenting with Nintendo's hardware features, which means more strange optimization tricks may appear in other big games in the future.