Porting games to the Nintendo Switch may be Difficult...

[Mr.Meerkat]

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We do know that the Switch will be powered by a custom NVIDIA Tegra chip, strongly rumoured to be the Maxwell-based X1. If that turns out to be true, it could be difficult for developers to port existing games to Nintendo’s new console.

25.6 GB/s is pretty low as everybody knows that 68 GB/s of Xbox One isn’t that great either. ESRAM is needed to reach good performance. But I am talking about the POV of down porting current gen games to Switch. Switch certainly fares well against last gen consoles, and Maxwell’s tiled rasterizer would certainly help older pixel + vertex shader based renderers. Too bad last gen consoles already got their last big AAA releases year ago. Easy ports between Xbox 360 and Switch are not available anymore. Xbox One is a significantly faster hardware. Straightforward code port is not possible. Content also needs to be simplified.”

Well it's not really news as we all knew that the Switch is rumoured to be based on the Tegra X1 but it seems that devs may not bother spending the time to port it as it's difficult...resulting in less third party support once again (or just terrible ports like how the PS3 ran games at somewhat lower performance or details compared to the Xbox 360 although it had the more powerful hardware or less content as the post suggests).

I know it's only a Ubisoft employee talking but considering that both the PS4 and xbone is running on X86 hardware while the switch probably running on ARM hardware, their instruction sets aren't the same either so...ermmm...

 

It may only be rumours but...if the Switch is hard to port to then...rip Nintendo  

Source

[vanished]

Since when have we cared about ports on Nintendo anyway though?  No one buys a Nintendo console hoping to play the latest AAA games... it's for first party Nintendo games and that's it...

[Mr.Meerkat]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

Since when have we cared about ports on Nintendo anyway though?  No one buys a Nintendo console hoping to play the latest AAA games... it's for first party Nintendo games and that's it...

Well...although that's true, Nintendo needs more people to buy their consoles which third party support helps else they're just going to continue loosing money and maybe even go bust  

[The Sloth]

personally 720p would be enough for me in Nintendo games. skyrim portable is something i would love to have. the swich is a awesome device its not designed to compete with a ps4 or xbox one, it has its own market  i am personally excited to play new pokemon games legend of Zelda and Skyrim on the go. long as the games are optimized i am good.  

[The Sloth]

1 minute ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Well...although that's true, Nintendo needs more people to buy their consoles which third party support helps else they're just going to continue loosing money and maybe even go bust  

 

Nintendo is vary rich they won't go bust. they will be successful with the new release. 

[Mr.Meerkat]

1 minute ago, nerdslayer1 said:

long as the games are optimized i am good

First party games? Yep, you can be sure they'll be optimised, third party games? Nawh, they'll be shite  

[Misanthrope]

So which apologist argument we'll see?

 

1) Doesn't matters cause "muh Mario!"

2) Nintendo build it so they'll come, they'll jump through hoops for them this time because [citation needed]

3) All of the above.

 

I'm thinking 3)

[The Sloth]

1 minute ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

First party games? Yep, you can be sure they'll be optimised, third party games? Nawh, they'll be shite  

no one wants a 4k experience like they did with ps4"pro" people just wants to play games simple good looking game that works like the 3ds did. 

[AresKrieger]

Umm isn't it the same style of hardware as a shield tablet, how would it be hard to port games if they already were ported to a similar device?

 

And do we actually have specs or just more bs rumors.....again

[The Sloth]

18 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

Umm isn't it the same style of hardware as a shield tablet, how would it be hard to port games if they already were ported to a similar device?

 

And do we actually have specs or just more bs rumors.....again

 

real dev spec 

[Mr.Meerkat]

22 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

Umm isn't it the same style of hardware as a shield tablet, how would it be hard to port games if they already were ported to a similar device?

 

And do we actually have specs or just more bs rumors.....again

Well it's from a game developer so...ish I guess?

[AlTech]

37 minutes ago, AresKrieger said:

Umm isn't it the same style of hardware as a shield tablet, how would it be hard to port games if they already were ported to a similar device?

Different OS and slightly different hardware.

 

The shield tablet had the Tegra K1 whereas this is rumored to have the Tegra X1.

 

[PlayStation 2]

48 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Since when have we cared about ports on Nintendo anyway though?  No one buys a Nintendo console hoping to play the latest AAA games... it's for first party Nintendo games and that's it...

There were some fairly decent ports to the GameCube way back when, Electronic Arts' games notwithstanding. 

[Drak3]

1 hour ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

There were some fairly decent ports to the GameCube way back when, Electronic Arts' games notwithstanding. 

Well, the GameCube's capabilities were good for it's day, and it didn't try to push stupid, gimmicky, shit controllers.

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

Well, the GameCube's capabilities were good for it's day, and it didn't try to push stupid, gimmicky, shit controllers.

That's a fair argument. The GameCube was fairly competitive hardware-wise and was not ridiculously hard to make games for, either. coughs very loudly at the PS2

But yeah, I don't know how Nintendo is pushing devs to come onto the Switch.

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

That's a fair argument. The GameCube was fairly competitive hardware-wise and was not ridiculously hard to make games for, either. coughs very loudly at the PS2

But yeah, I don't know how Nintendo is pushing devs to come onto the Switch.

Nintendo lost support for third party developers when they dropped the PoS that was the Wii, and gave them good reason to stay away from Nintendo with the WiiU. It would take the will of God and an act of Congress for the Switch to have any appeal to the developers that left Nintendo's last two pieces of shit.

 

Speaking as the excessively disappointed and pissed owner of a WiiU.

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

Nintendo lost support for third party developers when they dropped the PoS that was the Wii, and gave them good reason to stay away from Nintendo with the WiiU. It would take the will of God and an act of Congress for the Switch to have any appeal to the developers that left Nintendo's last two pieces of shit.

 

Speaking as the excessively disappointed and pissed owner of a WiiU.

It sucks too, because had Nintendo thrown a legitimate fight against the Xbox 360 and the PS3 like what they tried with the Xbox and PS2, I would've cared about the Wii way more.

First party wise, the Wii U was ironically a bit disappointing and frankly lazy. The Wii was fairly hit and miss first party wise.

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

It sucks too, because had Nintendo thrown a legitimate fight against the Xbox 360 and the PS3 like what they tried with the Xbox and PS2, I would've cared about the Wii way more.

First party wise, the Wii U was ironically a bit disappointing and frankly lazy. The Wii was fairly hit and miss first party wise.

Honestly, Nintendo should have ported over the DS, DSi, and 3DS games. That way, the gamepad could have been something more than an over glorified, shit controller.

I don't expect the Switch to sell well. I don't expect Nintendo to profit beyond first party 3DS game sales. I don't expect Nintendo to last to 2020.

[N3v3r3nding_N3wb]

3 hours ago, AresKrieger said:

Umm isn't it the same style of hardware as a shield tablet, how would it be hard to port games if they already were ported to a similar device?

The OS. It's difficult to port between Mac, Windows, and Linux, even though they run the same hardware.  It's difficult to port between those and the consoles, even though they're the same architecture type (x86).

[SteveGrabowski0]

I kind of get the Switch now. Nintendo is losing so badly in the home console market since Wii U was such a dog and since Wii was bought by people who mostly just left it collecting dust in the box or used it for Netflix once the novelty of Wii Fit and Wii Sports wore off. So instead of segmenting their market, they're just allowing their 3DS successor to be plugged into peoples' TVs. If there is one thing Nintendo knows, it's handheld gaming. I felt like an ass for buying a PSP ten years ago, especially when I first played a DS a few months after and saw how much fun it was (while my PSP only got used by my roommate who played old school NES roms on it after I jailbroke the system). Thankfully I didn't buy into the Game Gear hype and got the Game Boy back in the early 90s though, that was a great system. My brother is a store manager at WalMart and he told me the 3DS was just flying off the shelves this Christmas at his store even though the XBox One S and PS4 Slim were the consoles that had such great sales on them.

[Snadzies]

3rd party support hasn't been a thing since the SNES for Nintendo and what 3rd party games there are usually are exclusives for the Nintendo console so porting isn't an issue.

[Master Disaster]

7 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Since when have we cared about ports on Nintendo anyway though?  No one buys a Nintendo console hoping to play the latest AAA games... it's for first party Nintendo games and that's it...

Nintendo care.

[RagnarokDel]

8 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Since when have we cared about ports on Nintendo anyway though?  No one buys a Nintendo console hoping to play the latest AAA games... it's for first party Nintendo games and that's it...

Fuck Nintendo, man. I'll just wait for the emulator and play switch games in 4k60fps

[Monkey Dust]

With Sony and Microsoft doing pretty much the same thing, would there really be room for Nintendo to come in and try the same too? Carving out their own niche is the way for them to go IMO. They could do with bringing 3rd party developers on board to make Nintendo exclusive games, like Rare in the N64 days, though.

 

And ultimately if the Switch sells well 3rd party devs will make the effort with games they think are a good fit for the system, if it sells poorly they won't. Being tricky to port won't be an issue if the potential market is large enough.

[Sniperfox47]

41 minutes ago, Monkey Dust said:

With Sony and Microsoft doing pretty much the same thing, would there really be room for Nintendo to come in and try the same too? Carving out their own niche is the way for them to go IMO. They could do with bringing 3rd party developers on board to make Nintendo exclusive games, like Rare in the N64 days, though.

 

And ultimately if the Switch sells well 3rd party devs will make the effort with games they think are a good fit for the system, if it sells poorly they won't. Being tricky to port won't be an issue if the potential market is large enough.

That's the whole problem for them though.

 

Nintendo fans are typically completely insane slathering fangirls/boys, but even if they all drool over the new system and buy it day1 they're still a relatively small market.

 

To grow as a company outside Japan, Nintendo needs to expand their customer base. They need to make a console that appeals to more than just their existing fans.

 

How to do that? Make a console that can play the same games they already love and then let them take it with them to play the games they already love any where!

 

How not to do that? Make a new console that plays the same IPs they're already not really interested in.