Diablo III took 9 months to port to Nintendo Switch

[Mnementh]

DonFerrari said:

Mnementh said:

Yeah, doubtful Iron Galaxy applied all 130 employees for this project. But let's say 20 or 30 worked on this port. Still a tenth of the original workforce, and made in lesser time too. My point that ports are extremely cheap compared to new games stands.

If you need 30 person and almost a year to just do the port (mind you that a lot of the original team would be doing assets, gameplay, story, testing, etc) show that it isn't really that easy to make a port, and that it consumes a lot of resources.

Yeah, the 30 is maximized speculation. It were probably fewer and they probably weren't involved with that project all the time. But nevertheless, it is less than a tenth of the people initially worked on the game and in a much shorter time. Ports do take a lot less resources than new games. And really a lot as can be seen here. We talk about at least 10 ports, probably way more, for the resources of a new game.

And well, I do not think a port takes much less resources if porting happens to PS4 or XBox One. Not with a game of the size of Diablo. Testing alone takes a lot of time if the game is big. Diablo is no Snake Pass, which was basically running (without the fine tuning) in less than a week. But this seems right for the course, because Snake Pass is a much smaller game with much less combinations that have to be tested.

DonFerrari said:

And we have had several threads with people cursing devs and calling them dumb for not making a port of game X or Y, like MHW (which some swear didn't get ported because Sony payed to only Switch no receive based on a "very credible" insider)

Well, the insider had practically everything right about the changes of MonHun World. Which were in part unexpected changes. So it seems these leaks may have some credibility.

DonFerrari said:

KLXVER said:

Yeah, that was Snake Pass. An indie game they made playable in a few weeks. Not finished, just playable. 

That happens with fans of a specific console. Like Bayonetta 2 not coming to other consoles.

Yes there are some fans like that in all fanbase.

I don't think Switch is a hard platform to port, but certainly the less power can add more complexity to port and avoid bad ports. And some games aren't worth the effort and severe cuts versus expected sales.

More power can also add more complexity to port. If you upscale assets to fit with a higher resolution you probably have even more work to make them look fine, because downscaling models and textures can be done pretty much automatically, but adding new details is not that easy automatic. As a comparison, the first HD port of Okami on PS3 did things with the textures, to make them more detailed. The later HD-ports used that upscaled assets. But the work put into that PS3-port was not something to scoff at.