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

[pokoko]

Faelco said:

jason1637 said:

It depends on how much help Nintendo is giving devs with porting and what tools they provide them. Lots of devs said i it was easy and this is saying its hard. There is nothing to back up saying their trying to get on Nintendos good side.

It can be easy to port less technically demanding games, and impossible to port big games. Nothing surprising or contradictory with that. 

Yeah, this is nothing complicated.  

• Lightweight game that would run on the hardware natively = easy port
• Less demanding AAA game where certain effects and settings would need to be adjusted down = relatively easy port
• High level AAA game where actual content and level design would need to be scaled back to achieve stable performance = expensive port

That real danger is that the first two on the list might skip the Switch if the last one doesn't show up at all.  Publishers might have the perception that the audience won't be there without the big boys pulling in the consumers.  That's where Nintendo has to offer support and incentives out of the gate.  They should be doing their best to get the easy ports and relatively easy ports on the system, even if some of the expensive ports skip out.