Star Wars Outlaws runs surprisingly well on the Switch 2, leaked gameplay footage shows

The next big third-party release for the Switch 2 is going to be Star Wars Outlaws scheduled for September 4. The game that got mixed reviews from its PC and console players, is not the most demanding title, recommending at least an RTX 3060 Ti for 1080p 60 FPS. But it still needs quite a lot of optimization to run well on the Nintendo Switch 2. Fortunately, the newly leaked gameplay footage shows the game running quite smooth and consistently on the handheld, in docked mode.

A user named mataleao has shared around 40 minutes of gameplay footage of Star Wars Outlaws (linked below) on the Switch 2 in docked mode ahead of the official launch. It is unclear how they were able to get access to the game early but the gameplay shows the user resuming from a previous saved game. As for the resolution and FPS, while it’s hard to confirm, it looks to be running at sub-1080p and at around 30 FPS.

Notably, the footage was mostly indoor gameplay with some open world exploration towards the end.  

While there were a few frame drops and stutters here and there, the gameplay was mostly consistent. Constant drops in frame rates make games feel worse than a lower but consistent FPS, and that seems to be the case here with Star Wars Outlaws on the Switch 2. DLSS seems to be working, at least in docked mode.

On the contrary, the team from the GVG YouTube channel went hands-on with the game at PAX West and found that it runs “really poorly” on the Switch 2. The demo they got to play was set in a Star Destroyer with a lot of shooting and some space battles. The Star Destroyer sequence in particular felt unstable with inconsistent frame rates. However, they state frame rate drops to below 30 FPS suggesting that some parts of the game ran at 40 – 45 FPS or higher, which seems odd when considering the leaked footage.

Fortunately, we don’t have to wait long to see how the game actually runs on the Switch 2. And, how it runs in handheld mode vs docked.