One of Fortnite’s greatest strengths is its scalability. You can run it on the highest of high-end PCs or a years-old phone, and it’s going to be playable either way. Players across all platforms can join parties and play battle royale, Creative, Fortnite Festival, or almost anything else the game has to offer–sans Saves The World mode–and each player will get a performance and visual experience tailored to their platform. Among many other reasons it’s found such lasting success, this is key. You’re not locked out based on where you’re playing.

For my tastes, I still want that high-end experience, so I play Fortnite on my PC or my Xbox Series X most of the time. Switch 2 players have now joined the fray as the latest platform to host Epic’s everything-game, and though it’s a downgrade for those like me, for Switch 2 players, it’s a sizable step forward.

Playing Fortnite on Switch 2 was nearly my first time playing anything on Nintendo’s new hybrid console–save for Madden 26 a few days ago. Like that experience, I found Fortnite can’t keep up with Xbox Series X|S or PS5. Textures are noticeably fuzzier; the pop-in of far-away objects, like trees as you glide down to the island, is quite common; and character models lack the same fidelity of the other major consoles. At first, this irritated me. A new console should move the needle, I felt. Why have I been frantically chasing down a Switch 2 for sale if it can’t even offer me an experience the likes of which I’ve been playing for half a decade elsewhere?

Nintendo, of course, is the reason. The Switch 2, like the original Switch, isn’t trying to achieve performance parity with those other consoles. The Switch’s debut was essentially Nintendo making it clearer than ever that it wasn’t interested in the graphical arms race with Sony and Microsoft, and I can’t really blame it given the success of its machine. The Switch 2 definitely moves the needle closer to those consoles, but certainly falls short.

However, two things began to change my mind as I played more Fortnite on Switch 2. For one, handheld mode hides some of those aforementioned blemishes. Texture fidelity is hardly noticeable when I’m playing the game in my hands. The same goes for the character models. My assortment of skins–so many I hope I’m never able to calculate the true cost–look totally acceptable in Switch 2’s handheld mode. And whether I was playing on a monitor or in my hands, the game offers a smooth 60fps frame rate.

I’ve often felt like I can’t easily tell the difference between 4K and 1080p. If I intently look for it, I’ll spot it, but in typical play sessions, it’s the 60 frames I really demand because that’s what I notice effortlessly. This is where Fortnite on Switch 2 really succeeds. The game looked terrible on Switch, to be blunt about it. That’s no longer the case. On Switch 2, the frame rate boost carries it a long way forward, and eventually helped me forgive some of its other shortcomings compared to my preferred platforms.

I said there were two things that changed my mind about Switch 2’s Fortnite. The other is Lego Odyssey. The survival-crafting game that debuted in Fortnite’s massive 2023 update looks awesome on the Switch 2, and it occurred to me how important that will be on the kid-friendliest console out there. Once I played Lego Odyssey on Switch 2, I felt my frustration evaporating quickly. I pictured my kids playing this mode next to me on the couch while I joined them on my Xbox, and I’m sure that use case will be a popular one for families that game together.

Fortnite has been reinventing itself for years now. With experiences like Unreal Editor for Fortnite overhauling Creative mode, music integration in the form of Fortnite Festival and a new mode that lets players have a dance party with Sabrina Carpenter, and the abundance of Fall Guys and Lego games to play, Fortnite hasn’t truly been a battle royale game in a long time. That remains its most-popular mode today, but the sum total of the game’s other virtually limitless games to play make up a great deal of what younger players are playing when they boot up the game.

The Switch 2 isn’t going to be where I play Fortnite battle royale, but it will surely become the go-to platform for my kids when they want to play Lego games, music games, or anything Creative has to offer. And in any case, it’s going to look much nicer than the potato version that ran on the original Switch. I expect players who are siloed in Nintendo’s ecosystem will be very impressed with Fortnite on Switch 2, even as I and others recognize it’s still a technical half-step toward levels of detail we’ve been enjoying since 2020.

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