Capcom: "MHW can't be done on Switch." But might make a Switch specific MH game. (Rumor)

[vivster]

spemanig said:
I mean that's just ridiculous. The idea that anything like MHW can't exist on Switch when BotW does is just silly. The idea that games like Wolfenstein II and Doom could be graphically downgraded to be playable on the Switch but MHW is this impossible task is silly. Dragon's Dogma ran on a 360. Claims like this are just so absurd and phony to me.

I'm being genuine when I ask this: just what exactly is MHW doing computationally that couldn't be done on the Switch or even a 360 with fewer polygons, less detailed textures, and maybe less complex particle effects? Are there physics or ai demands going on here that I'm just not seeing that are integral to the gameplay and simultaneously impossible on weaker hardware? Like literally, what are they even talking about?

That's not an argument. Literally every game in existence can run on the Switch if the necessary adjustments are taken. It's not a technological issue.Some games are made in a way that their systems are built from the ground up with higher power in mind and adjusting them takes a considerable amount of effort and time to completely rewrite it. When a company says that a game cannot be ported to Switch it means that it cannot be done using a justifiable amount of resources. Games like Doom have been specifically made very flexible and programmed extremely scalable so that porting them wasn't really an effort. Doom in particular runs very well on weaker systems.

Of course you could argue why not all programmers or projects are made that well and scalable. That's up to the individual teams I guess. Of course it would be nice but it's just not the reality. And even though it sucks for Nintendo fans and can't help but chuckle a bit that the most ardent defenders of game exclusivity are now the "port beggars" themselves, calling Capcom liars and arguing for easy portability.

We shouldn't forget that it was Nintendo's choice to design the Switch how they did, so putting all of the blame on developers seems a bit unfair when they are not the ones straying from the norm on purpose and making it deliberately harder for AAA studios to port their games. In the end it's a decision of money and given the big success of the game it might not've been the worst decision to skip a Switch version.