In September, Sonic Racing Crossworlds launched on nearly every platform imaginable, albeit with one exception. Switch 2 owners could only access the Switch 1 version at launch, with their own $10 Switch 2 upgrade path arriving in early December - discounted to $5 in its launch week.

That version is now out - only digitally for now, with a physical cartridge option arriving in "early 2026." We have used the occasion to give Sega's latest crossover-loaded kart racer a spin, which turned up one interesting surprise.

We wondered, thanks to its delay, how SRC on Switch 2 would turn out. Would its base graphic presentation look more like Switch 1, which features significant visual downgrades and a mere 30fps refresh? Or would it look more like its Xbox Series S form, with more visual features toggled and hitting 60fps? We can now confirm that the answer is somewhere in between.

The Switch 2 version does include Xbox Series S similarities like higher resolution for distant textures, higher crowd decal resolution and better texture filtering. However, compared to Series S, the Switch 2 port's visual gaps include missing post-processing effects, lacking screen-space reflections, reduced quality cube maps, removed bloom effects and some lower-res textures on roads and surfaces. In some ways, the Switch 2 version better resembles Switch 1 than Series S.

Yet while in motion, the gap in overall fidelity actually may favour Switch 2 over Series S, thanks largely to higher resolution on Nintendo's latest console.

In docked mode, Switch 2 reaches resolutions that measure at or near 1440p, compared to only 1080p on Series S. That advantage for the Nintendo hybrid is appreciable, as Switch 2 ultimately enjoys cleaner, less smeary imagery compared to the blurry Series S presentation, all while both run at a seemingly steady 60fps.

Although this is an Unreal Engine 5 game, we can't necessarily draw conclusions about how other future UE5 ports on Switch 2 may resemble what Sega has done here, since SRC doesn't lean on keynote UE5 features like Lumen or Nanite.

Sadly, Sega hasn't resolved SRC's biggest Switch 1 issue in the six weeks since its launch: uneven frame pacing. It still suffers from frame-time stutter that breaks up its 30fps refresh rate, which reduces its feeling of smoothness while frantically racing against Sonic and other gaming mascots.