Wccftech has had the opportunity to chat with both Alex Heise, Director of Business Development at Virtuos North America, and Eoin O' Grady, Technical Director at Black Shamrock to discuss working on the Nintendo Switch 2 and the system's capabilities. The talk soon turned to the Nintendo Switch 2's power and Eoin O' Grady informed the site that he believes that any game that runs at 60fps on the Xbox Series S should in theory be able to be ported to the Nintendo Switch 2. Virtous has achieved many notable ports in recent times including Dark Souls Remastered, Hogwarts Legacy, and most recently The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered.
In terms of raw console performance, do you agree that the Switch 2 is closer to the Xbox Series S than it is to the PlayStation 4, making it easier for developers to port their current-gen games to the hardware?
Eoin: GPU-wise, the Switch 2 performs slightly below the Series S; this difference is more noticeable in handheld mode. However, the Series S does not support technologies like DLSS, which the Switch 2 does. This makes the GPU capabilities of the two consoles comparable overall.
CPU-wise, there is a clearer distinction between the two consoles. The Switch 2 is closer to the PlayStation (PS) 4 in this respect, having a CPU just a bit more powerful than the PS4's. Since most games tend to be more GPU-bound than CPU-bound when well optimized, the impact of this difference largely depends on the specific game and its target frame rate. Any game shipping at 60 FPS on the Series S should easily port to the Switch 2. Likewise, a 30 FPS Series S game that's GPU-bound should also port well. Games with complex physics, animations, or other CPU-intensive elements might incur additional challenges in reaching 30 or 60 FPS or require extra optimization during porting.
