By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Gaming Discussion - Ex-Ubisoft Dev: Direct ports from PS4/Xbox One to Nintendo Switch not possible

Sebastian Aaltonen, former senior rendering lead at Ubisoft and co-founder of Second Order LTD, wrote on the Beyond 3D forum that direct ports from the current consoles to Nintendo Switch may not be possible.

“Around 50% of modern game engine frame time goes to running compute shaders (lighting, post processing, AA, AO, reflections, etc). Maxwell’s tiled rasterizer has zero impact on compute shaders. 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,” Sebastian Aaltonen explained.

Source: http://gametransfers.com/direct-ports-from-ps4xbox-one-to-nintendo-switch-could-not-be-possible-according-to-former-ubisoft-developer/



Around the Network

I do agree with him. From a technical perspective it is not possible without huge omission. Plus third party game sales also is against NS.



Lol is anyone really shocked?



Not shocked.. was expecting this.



Of course it wasn't going to happen. Switch never had the hardware to pull that off. Even a old Shield TV will out muscle it. Thoughts of ports of PS4/X1 games should be long from anyones thoughts.



Around the Network

Fair enough. Hope we get some new third party games instead of ports then. If we could get a Wii situation minus the shovelware, that would be great.



bunchanumbers said:
Of course it wasn't going to happen. Switch never had the hardware to pull that off. Even a old Shield TV will out muscle it. Thoughts of ports of PS4/X1 games should be long from anyones thoughts.

but but but FF15 must come to switch.  lol



KLXVER said:
Fair enough. Hope we get some new third party games instead of ports then. If we could get a Wii situation minus the shovelware, that would be great.

You can expect indie ones but not AAA types.



The 3rd party games that will sell best on the Switch won't need that much power anyway. Monster Hunter, Youkai Watch, Bravely Default... even Skyrim can be adjusted to fit the Switch. And if a big PS4-XBOne title has a decent chance of selling well on the Switch, they will take the time to modify it.



You know it deserves the GOTY.

Come join The 2018 Obscure Game Monthly Review Thread.

Egelo said:
bunchanumbers said:
Of course it wasn't going to happen. Switch never had the hardware to pull that off. Even a old Shield TV will out muscle it. Thoughts of ports of PS4/X1 games should be long from anyones thoughts.

but but but FF15 must come to switch.  lol

If its going to take them more than a year (work time), to port it to PC,...... yeah I dont see that happending. Switch probably wont ever get FF15.