The game is exclusive to ‘New’ hardware
When Xenoblade Chronicles 3D arrived earlier this year, exclusively for the New 3DS, fans were skeptical as to whether or not it would have just ran on older hardware. YouTube user Osha has given the experiment a go, using homebrew software to slow down the clock speed of his New 3DS to that of the previous model. As you can clearly see, the game runs, but it’s much slower and clunkier.
It’s also important to note that the New 3DS has a number of different hardware enhancements, not just an increase in clock speed (it also has more RAM and VRAM), so the better hardware is inherently beefing this up beyond the capabilities of a normal 3DS.
With those caveats in place, it’s still interesting to note that the game runs in an incredibly sluggish fashion, which should put to bed the rumor that Xenoblade was merely ported to the New 3DS for the sole purpose of selling devices — and not out of necessity.
