It generally interests me whether anyone has experience with Nintendo Switch porting or porting to other Nintendo consoles, and how complicated that actually is to do in practice. In a way, Nintendo consoles have always been their own thing, they’ve had a different audience and even a different niche of games, and that goes all the way back to the 90s with the N64 (and probably even earlier, but that was before my time). And so…considering that Nintendo has always had unique consoles like the Wii, N64, Switch, etc., I’m curious how difficult it really is to port games to them, and specifically, since the Switch is the current one, how hard it actually is to do proper Nintendo Switch porting, and what the challenges are.
The main reason I’m asking is because I’m trying to understand why consoles fight for dominance on the market by creating exclusives. But what I don’t understand is why games that don’t have exclusive deals with a specific console don’t simply port their games to other consoles to expand their audience. And on the other hand, it seems to me that most games avoid doing Nintendo Switch porting, and that if they do decide to port to another platform, they mostly focus on PlayStation rather than the Switch. So I’m curious why that is, are there not enough companies that handle porting, is the process too complicated, or is it something else entirely?
Edit: OK I get it…despite having studios that can do such like Pingle studios or Devoted. Architecture is just way to different to be done properly, or it takes too much of an effort if done later, but a lot of games are coming out for NS as well
by Spiritual_Carrot_510
29 Comments
its a portable for one, so the power needed for current games just isnt really there, and its also Nvidia, when all the other consoles and steamdeck (and soon machine) are AMD, so its even more effort on top of that.
Generally they will look and see if theres an audience for their genre on the switch, then they look at how hard the porting would be, these days the deck could give them a general idea, then if it checks out they do it.
And yes porting is a difficult thing, at least to a device like the switch from normal consoles and PC.
If the publisher is big enough they may take the gamble as the switch 2 has enough power now to offer a playable experience for most games, except the really really heavy ones, and for the very heavy ones they may outsource to a port studio with experience, like what you saw for crysis, witcher 3 and 2077 on switch.
No idea what you’re talking about, afaik the majority of not-too-demanding games do get Nintendo ports these days
Which games specifically are you talking about? 90% of the time its because the switch cant run it.
If the switch can run it and the devs think it will make money, they will port it.
Because porting to the switch is much more difficult than porting to the other consoles or PC. The switch hardware is very outdated in weak, even the switch 2 is essentially only on par with the steam deck at best. So it takes a lot more resources to scale down the game. If it’s an online game with cross play that also requires a lot of work to ensure that the scale downs don’t effect anything gameplay-wise. Nintendo also takes a larger than standard cut of the sale, and is more restrictive than other platforms. So it takes more work, for less money than other ports
Nintendo’s biggest problem is Nintendo.
* 1st party games are the system sellers.
* Historically development has been a challenge and not as open as other platforms.
* Post GC, Nintendo consoles are underpowered when compared to current gen. This requires extra design work (e.g. Outlaws runs so will because ubi took the effort in making the environment less complex. Xbox & PS are very similar platforms so moving voice between the two is “easier”. Cib 7 was built with switch as target platform, makes it easier to scale up to more powerful hardware.)
* 3rd parties only get enticed when sales of the platform are high.
N64 was because of cartridges being too expensive and lacking storage space (Sounds familiar?).
Gamecube was because the PS2 was so massively successful and the Gamecube and Xbox sold so little in comparison, that most companies would rather just make the game for PS2 and call it a day.
Wii was because the console was low in power compared to PS3/X360. The Third Party games it got were either exclusives or games of… questionable quality.
The Wii U is the Wii U.
And I don’t know what do you mean with the Switch? Considering the huge amount of games it has. It’s biggest third party library in the whole history of Nintendo. Everyone wanted their games on the console because they sold very well. If some game didn’t come it was because the console couldn’t handle it.
The largest factor is that since the Wii Nintendo consoles have been significantly less powerful than the other two consoles and PC. Which leads to developers sometimes having to create completely separate versions of the game if they want to port it to a Nintendo console.
For instance the Hogwarts Legacy switch edition looks almost nothing like the game on PS/Xbox and PC. If the changes are too big and the expected sales aren’t high enough then it’s just not worth making a port for Nintendo.
Another issue is that Nintendo consoles have an image of being the family friendly console. Which means that it is unlikely to have the kind of players who would want access to more mature games. I think this has changed with the Switch 1/2, but it still is a factor that Nintendo has to work on.
This is a handheld system. It’s an overpowered handheld with crap battery but still a handheld. It will do best with games designed for systems a generation or 2 back.
When you look at the Switch consider what got developed for the DS and gameboy.
It has to be ported, which costs money, and some dont want to spend that, especially for games that are more graffic intensive.
The biggest reason was that switch 1 was just not very powerful, and making a switch 1 version for a modern game, especially AAA ones is just not that feasible without insane compromises. Less graphically intensive games including many indie games are already very common and popular on switch.
Ports are also not that simple to do. AAA games can take several months to over a year to port, and porting to the switch needs way more work than the other consoles due to its limitations. Some of the most impressive ports the switch 1 was able to get were witcher 3 and doom, both relatively old AAA games which were majorly downgraded to make work. Newer AAA games just wouldn’t work at all.
Now that the switch 2 is much more powerful, you can generally expect a lot more games to get ported to it. But it’ll take a while since the console is so new, many games already in development (and mind you, the average AAA game dev time is 3-5 years) would not have even had the switch 2 as an option.
The lack of GTAV and MGSV on Switch in particular baffles me. Both were originally made for 7th gen hardware. Not having your most popular games on potentially the best selling console of all time is wild.
Are you just a troll?
The Switch does get a lot of less demanding ports to be fair, look at how badly some of the more demanding ports run on the original Switch though, that is why. The Switch 2 will open the door for a lot more ports in my opinion though. I mean it already has Cyberpunk which runs really well by all accounts.
It costs money, there is a risk there. So they do an analysis and either do or don’t based on that.
But as has been said elsewhere less demanding games will show up on the switch 2.
You’re right that they considered Nintendo a separate niche… in the GameCube – WiiU eras. The line has getting more and more blurred especially with the Switch 2 because it’s closer in power to a home console competitively to other handhelds and their console counterparts. Still, most games that aren’t ported to Switch are not done so because of technical reasons or power limitations. That was pretty much the only thing stopping ports, and even then there were some pretty impressive ones (Doom, Witcher 3).
Lacks the power needed
I really wanted Bethesda to at least port Dishonored 1 with DLCs to Switch 1. It’s one port that I really scratch my head and don’t understand why is it not a thing already as most of successful Xbox 360/PS3 games were already ported a long time ago. Now I really want all Dishonored games and Prey for Switch 2.
1. It’s not a simple port. If you tried to run most modern AAA games on a Switch 1, you’d either play at 10 fps, or just overheat your console. The Switch 1 was worse than the Xbox Ones and PS4s, and even the Switch 2 is worse than the Series S, the weakest “current-gen” console of Xbox and Playstation.
2. People who play a modern game care a lot about it delivering in visuals, gameplay, etc. The Switch does not deliver those nearly as well as other consoles or PC can.
Combination of factors, and others have already raised the power relative to equivalent generation consoles. If you’re focusing on the Switch and Switch 2, one additional factor will be that they’re both mid-gen releases.
So, they come out with a potential backlog of as-yet-imported games.
If you add this to the different, and slightly less powerful, architecture then you get potentially more effort for a version that may look or perform slightly worse.
People will likely want it both ways to reflect the original day-one price but the work to get it ported will need to be budgeted from somewhere.
Also, especially if you take initially limited dev kits into account, deva are likely to concentrate first on whatever their upcoming releases are. Why take resources and platform familiarity away from being able to maybe get the next big release out cross-platform day one?
Then there’s the specifics of the Switch 2. More capable than its predecessor but at a cost. If you’re purely catering for a digital audience then it’s less of an issue but as soon physical is involved you’ve got a fast enough but fixed/limited capacity and higher price format to factor in.
Physical releases may be by far the minority these days but their advocates are vocal.
If there’s no easy way to cram your game into a cart, you may start weighing up whether the key card bitching balances out the port begging.
Various reasons:
1. Devs (and publishers) start from the top and work their way down. Meaning, they make the most graphically and impressive game they can make with the highest end specs (i.e. high end PC) and work their way down to the consoles. The Switch 2 (aside from the Switch 1) is notably the weakest among the hardware (though people debate that is on par with the Series S, but again that’s debatable). So much stripping of the games performance and visuals are needed.
2. Nintendo is notably about their “gimmicks” if you will, so Nintendo will want you to utilize some aspect of their system’s niche. For instance, the recent Tomb Raider release for Switch 2 has mouse controls. I can’t really think of good reason to use the Switch 2’s mouse controls for the game, but its there.
3. This is just a rumor, but making games for the Switch is harder than for consoles or PC from a production standpoint. Switch is a console and with consoles you have to range for decisions with digital and physical (even with the game key cards). This would make sense, however, because with Nintendo, its cartridges and not discs. Discs have bigger storage, are cheaper, and more ubiquitous. Nintendo has the market on the cartridges and they are more expensive because of that. This inadvertently leads to…
….4. Yes you could just go all digital, but then you have to weigh the risk/reward for going to the console. Is there an actual population there for you to make a profit? Is all of this worth it for meager returns? Its a gamble. Games like MGSD as you mentioned below probably aren’t gonna have the population on the Switch 2 right now above things like PC, PS5, and even Xbox because the downgrades for the Switch don’t make it worth it now.
5. This is kinda real, but also not real. But most 3rd party games, by the time they make it to the Switch, they have their GotY editions out. Essentially the devs have milked everything out of the other consoles (and in some cases PC) consumers that they can and they get to the Switch and are like, “Well, here you go.” (Ironically, that has always been one of my favorite things about the Switch). You could say this for later released PC games as well.
This is a highly technical question – yes, it is harder to port a game to Switch rather than to PS from PC due to hardware limitations, CPU trims, and dual mode tuning, etc. But overall, it’s possible, and there are some studios that specialize in Nintendo Switch porting, like Devoted Studios, Pingle Studios, etc. But I believe that, when games aren’t ported, it’s mostly due to one of these:
1. The game is too heavy to be ported to Switch.
2. It’s too expensive to port the game to Switch.
3. The game just won’t work properly on Switch.
cus the switch 2 has only been out 5 months and the first switch was considerably weaker than ps4 and xbox. a lot of games that did get ported had reduced quality and performance.
Nintendo has always had weak hardware, so a lot of games simply wouldn’t run. Switch 2 is the first time heavier games are possible because they have Nvidia Upscaling and RTX raytracing.
If anything, I’m mostly disappointed that games like ZZZ and Genshin Impact aren’t available for Switch. Their gameplay and graphics would be perfect for Nintendo, but the overeliance on microtransactions means they’ll never be ported.
The old Switch just couldn’t run most games well enough. Indie games were always quite popular in comparison.
Technical limitations and money, but mostly money.
If it doesn’t generate enough revenue, the studio won’t consider it.
Switch 2 is about to receive more 3rd party support than you an handle.
Cost vs Reward
I don’t really see it this way anymore. However in the past Nintendo has always had lower power hardware, goofy controllers, or in the case of the Wii U sold like dog shit.
We started seeing a lot more ports come to the OG switch, and I think that trend will only accelerate with the switch 2. We’re already getting stuff like Cyberpunk, Yakuza, FF7R, and Star Wars Outlaws.
I think some games need more power than this system can give. Studios would have to cut too much, and they skep it. It’s not always about interest, maybe is hardware limits.