Last week's Nintendo Direct was packed with new third party titles and one of the most ambitious to catch our attention was the Switch 2 port of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Oliver lined up what little footage we have with the PlayStation 5 version to figure out exactly how Square Enix has managed to bring a visually impressive current-gen title to the Nintendo hybrid. Put simply, the footage suggests an intelligently handled, cut-back version of the original game. The closer you look, the more compromises you'll see, but it's clearly still Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and seems to hold up well.

Let's talk resolution - one of the key compromises we should expect from the port. Based on the footage in the Direct (assumed to be docked gaming) we're looking at a native 720p, upscaling to 1080p. It looks like the game uses the less expensive tiny DLSS or DLSS lite to perform its upscaling pass as artefact patterns and the general presentation look consistent with other uses of the scaler. The main impact point with this scaling comes from hair rendering, which looks grainy and unstable.

Frame-rate targets 30fps, just like PS5's quality mode, but obviously an upscaled 720p is a far cry from the Sony console's near-native 4K resolution. We're looking forward to comparisons with PS5's performance mode though: pixel counts are in the 1152p area, but the scaling is very soft, something that can't be said of the Switch 2 version.

More interesting are the cuts beyond resolution. Across the footage we've seen, general clutter is significantly reduced, foliage density in outdoors areas is reduced, shadows are pared back and there may well be more obvious pop-in. Crucially though, the cuts are not noticeable enough for the user to feel short-changed - not based on the footage we've seen thus far, anyway. It's only really in the side-by-side shots against the far more capable PS5 do the compromises become noticeable.

The footage in the Direct did look a little choppy though - actual drops from the 30fps target can't be ruled out, but equally it could be inconsistent frame-pacing, where new frames are delivered in an inconsistent manner. This was an issue seen in initial footage of Final Fantasy 7 Remake on Switch 2, but it was also addressed by launch. Fingers crossed it'll be the same, nicely paced 30fps for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

Also of note are file sizes. Based on development comments, it looks like Rebirth's storage footprint is in the region of 100GB, up against a 150GB dual disc release on PS5. This would hint at a reduction in the quality of texture assets - evidence of which is seen in the footage - so it'll be interesting to see how the final game presents across the board in that regard.

In summary, while we've got very little footage to work with, what we have seen represents an entirely plausible demonstration of how a current-gen console title can be scaled down to Switch 2 - it's not so much that cuts exist but more in how they implemented, and what we've seeing here looks impressive. And, of course, there's still development time left. The game isn't due for release until June 3, 2026.