Ports like Elden Ring and Borderlands 4 have fans worrying about the state of Switch 2 development
Something weird is going on with Switch 2 game development
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The Switch 2 might be selling gangbusters to the public, but behind the scenes there’s an emerging narrative about the apparent difficulty of developing for the console. Since its release, whispers across the internet alongside disclosures from established developers are making it sound like Nintendo is being selective about who is allowed to make games for its portable hardware and how. The decision-making process at the heart of it all is confounding developers, critics, and fans alike.
The topic of game development on the Switch 2 has been at the forefront of discussion surrounding the console since news broke out at Gamescom that Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition reportedly runs poorly when it is played in handheld mode. According to journalists on-site who tried out a demo, FromSoftware’s lauded open-world RPG has trouble staying stable once players ventured out of the tutorial, which raised some concerns about the hardware’s innate power.
The worry about the console’s capabilities intensified for some fans as reports about the performance of Borderlands 4 surfaced on the internet, with personalities insisting that the Nintendo port of the game could scarcely handle more than a few enemies on-screen at a time. However, footage that has since been uploaded online of the loot-based RPG appears to run fine during encounters, albeit confined to 30 frames per second. Still, some fans did notice hitches during specific portions of gameplay, like whenever the player enters a new area of the map. This coincides with the issues raised with the Switch 2 port of Elden Ring, which apparently struggled when the game transitioned from a confined space to an open-world area.
The lack of stability for a Switch 2 port is evidently not a foregone conclusion: Beyond excellent adaptations like Cyberpunk 2077, recent previews of Final Fantasy 7 on Nintendo’s hardware are being lavished with an enormous amount of praise. Digital Foundry went so far as to call the Switch 2 version the best-looking thing they’d experienced on the hardware.
The idea that port quality can vary is not ground-breaking, but the reason why some games are faring better than others on Switch 2 appears more complex. In mid-July, Digital Extremes, the people behind Warframe, claimed that the studio couldn’t get its hands on a Switch 2 development kit. Moreover, Digital Extremes said that there was a big “backlog” of demand for the kits, meaning that other studios were having trouble securing the hardware necessary to bring their titles to the platform. Around the same time, other outlets were reporting that multiple studios, some of them major, were apparently still waiting for development kits of their own. Indies in particular were having hard luck securing a Switch 2 development kit during the summer based on comments made by developers behind titles like Citizen Sleeper 2. The select few who did get early access to Switch 2 development kits, meanwhile, reinforced the idea that Nintendo was not only picky about who was allowed on the platform, but also hugely secretive about it as well.
“There was a lot of security around it,” Russell Kay, senior product manager behind GameMaker, said in June to GamesIndustry.biz. “We had to have a locked room, things like that, and only certain people had access to the kit.”
Nintendo did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but much of what’s been shared by developers makes sense. When many of these remarks were originally made, they were in reference to a system that wasn’t out yet or hadn’t been available on the market for very long. A similar scenario for dev kit availability apparently played out for Switch during its first year, and that platform still went on to become a bona fide haven for indie games and a highly-desired platform for ports overall.
But the topic has resurfaced recently due to messy port situations hailing out of Gamescom, alongside reports that make Nintendo’s decision-making process sound bizarre. After all, if major studios like Ubisoft supposedly can’t lock down a Switch 2 development kit, how are titles like an obscure Campfire game making it onto the platform?
“Nintendo seems to be almost discouraging Switch 2 development to some degree,” John Linneman, a member of Digital Foundry, said in a recent podcast. “I’ve spoken to plenty of developers where they were either told that they should just ship it on Switch one and rely on backwards compatibility. There’s a lot of developers that are unable to get Switch 2 dev kits. We talked to a lot of devs at Gamescom this year and so many of them said the same things. They wanna ship on Switch 2. They would love to do Switch 2 versions. They can’t get the hardware. It’s really difficult right now.”
It’s also been a reoccurring subject because the situation isn’t getting all that much better for developers. Just earlier this month, popular gaming personality Jeff Gerstmann received an anonymous tip from a video game industry worker who supported the notion that some studios couldn’t lock down the development kits that they wanted. The knowledge that developers can’t just turn around and port their titles also adds complexity to the idea that third-party games on the platform aren’t selling well, since it means that the platform isn’t offering the full breadth of experiences that are actually possible. The subject has also refused to die, in part because there’s an unspoken worry that the other shoe is going to drop for the Switch 2. It’s obviously a more capable platform than its predecessor, but the Switch 2 lags behind the competition at large. Even Nintendo is already contending with the limits of its own hardware. Any news regarding port availability and prowess is bound to add fuel to the fire, whether it’s good news or bad news.
“There were some weird exclusions from big developers,” Ollie Mack, a member of Digital Foundry, said during a recent show in reference to who could and couldn’t get a Switch 2 development kit. “Some weird inclusions as well.”
