Hypothetically, if Nintendo's Console Hardware matched PlayStation 5 & Xbox Series X, how much chaos do you think Smash could handle?

[NinTOONdo]

First of all, just 2B clear, I am not complaining about Nintendo nearly always being a generation behind their competitors like Sony and/or Microsoft, Nintendo's always had a reason to do that since it makes their own first-party games much easier to develop significantly faster without relying too much on maximum graphical capacity. This thread is meant to be a What if Nintendo had an ongoing system that is comparably powerful like the latest PlayStations & Xboxes while yet even in that state, Nintendo still won the console-wars anyways in terms of successful sales. That hypothetical scenario leads to this post's most important question: How much chaos do you think that a Super Smash Bros game could handle simultaneously during gameplay? Do you think that Smash Bros would be able to handle 12-player Smash even with all players using Ice Climbers, and adding the Double Cherry as a Smash item that can be stacked too/as-well? Do you think that in addition to all of that, up to 12+ Poke Balls could be on-stage simultaneously, and not only that, but every Pokémon that emerges from Poke Balls in that Smash game can be repeated like 10+ times simultaneously with Ditto being no exception? Or do you think their essentially flawless graphics would take-up too much potential to add chaos to their gameplay without crashing/freezing the game or even burning their console down?

This post is meant 2B a speculation thread about what-if Nintendo Consoles were ahead of their times like Sony's PlayStations and Microsoft's Xboxes always do, and most importantly, how this would impact the casual gameplay limit during Casually Chaotic Smash Bros Battles.

I personally think that Special Smash (aka Custom Smash) would definitely be capable of supporting 8 Players total (even with everyone using Ice Climbers) in The Fountain of Dreams and/or Wii Fit Studio with their reflections enabled and the items set to Very-High.

 

[Oddball]

All the chaos.

ALL OF IT.

 

[Wario Wario Wario]

I think how many characters can be on screen at once would less be a case of hardware and more a case of game design - you'd have to account for how fun existing character movesets, items, and stages would be with an increased player count, and even if you did deduce that 12+ characters would be fun, there'd still have to be a ton of balance accomodations both to the engine and individual content to ensure the gameplay works around that maximum. (For instance, projectiles would have to be bigger and more characters would have to have access to them, same with full-body hitboxes; stages would have to be either a lot bigger or have two forms; so on)

 

[Guynamednelson]

hardware

It actually would be this:

[Switch] How many controllers can I pair with my console at the same time? | Q&A | Support | Nintendo

How many Nintendo Switch controllers can I pair with my console at the same time?

www.nintendo.com

It's an official source which states Switches can only support up to eight controllers at a time, no matter what kind they are, and using two Joycons as one controller still counts as two controllers.

That said I think something else preventing them from increasing the playercount would be how niche 8-player Smash with 8 actual human players is already. If most people only have room for 4-player Smash at best, support for 12 players isn't going to fix that.

 

[Quillion]

In theory, it would be able to handle a lot more detailed animations, models, and stuff on screen.

In practice, funding the development of "taking advantage of the power" will probably require layoffs, microtransactions, delays, and all the other BS going on in the industry right now.