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Forums - Nintendo - Nintendo - Games developed for PC will take about a year to port to Switch

Frogger on 02 February 2017

Interesting.



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pokoko on 02 February 2017

Ouch. Wasn't there someone saying it was an easy port?



monocle_layton on 02 February 2017

so, is this good or bad?



Manlytears on 02 February 2017
cycycychris said:

"Yasuda was in attendance at Nintendo’s Corporate Management Policy Briefing, and relayed a comment from Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto said that games developed with PC as a base can be ported to Switch in about a year. The report also adds that the console was revealed to third-parties last summer. It’s thought that we could therefore see major multiplatform titles starting from the fall season."

http://nintendoeverything.com/miyamoto-games-made-with-pc-as-a-base-can-be-ported-to-switch-in-about-a-year/

i guess we can expect more of the AAA games to be announced for Fall considering there reveal date to the companies and how long it will take to port.

1 entire year to make a port !!?
1 fuc#@#$@ year of work just to make a port! This can't be true, this needs to be a problem of translation, otherwise Nity third party support will be just abysmal. 1 year for a port is just too much time, too expensive, this just can't be true.



lasershow on 02 February 2017

Why are we taking Miyamoto's word as truth. What does he know about porting from other consoles or PC?



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maxleresistant on 02 February 2017

That sounds like an excuse to jusify the awful thurd party support.

Like "hey, buy it at launch big games are coming this fall" and then nothing comes.



potato_hamster on 02 February 2017
cycycychris said:

"Yasuda was in attendance at Nintendo’s Corporate Management Policy Briefing, and relayed a comment from Shigeru Miyamoto. Miyamoto said that games developed with PC as a base can be ported to Switch in about a year. The report also adds that the console was revealed to third-parties last summer. It’s thought that we could therefore see major multiplatform titles starting from the fall season."

http://nintendoeverything.com/miyamoto-games-made-with-pc-as-a-base-can-be-ported-to-switch-in-about-a-year/

i guess we can expect more of the AAA games to be announced for Fall considering there reveal date to the companies and how long it will take to port.

... no. This is a bad thing, like this is porting PS3 games to Vita levels of time. For example, the game I worked on took a finished PS3 game, and 10 months  with a 50+ man team, and our port was considered "not great" compared to the PS3 version, and was missing many features that had to be cut at the last minute in order to stick to the release window, and our team had Sony specialists who flew in to help us get off the ground on it.

Assuming the team is knowledgable of both platforms, porting a game from X1 to PS4 would be a few months of work,  for example.



potato_hamster on 02 February 2017
Ka-pi96 said:
A year sounds like an incredibly long time for a port. Is that one guy working on it by himself or something? Surely the biggest studios with more manpower can get it done much faster than a year right?

In many cases, things can't just be done simultaneously, and need to be done sequentially. It's not that simple.



bunchanumbers on 02 February 2017
pokoko said:
Ouch. Wasn't there someone saying it was an easy port?

Yeah I believe it was Pachter.

Looks like the opposite thing happened again. Damn that Pachter.



pokoko on 02 February 2017
Ka-pi96 said:
A year sounds like an incredibly long time for a port. Is that one guy working on it by himself or something? Surely the biggest studios with more manpower can get it done much faster than a year right?

To be honest, I doubt porting to the Switch would be a priority for most developers or publishers unless it turns into a huge hit down the road.  At this point, I would imagine most would only have a small team working on it.

The real problem is that most multi-platform games are already pressed for time all the way up to release and beyond, when they're still working on patches for the things they couldn't finish.  This is even more true for the big annual releases that won't delay past the holiday season even if the game is barely working.  Add on top of that a port that's more difficult than the others, with a lower installed base and a less favorable eco-system, and it might mean the Switch version won't see any attention until after it has already launched on PC/Xbox/Playstation.