Since the release of titles like GTA 6 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19th, the arrival of games on the Nintendo Switch 2 has been a topic of discussion. Despite rumors, Rockstar Games has never confirmed whether the title will arrive on the platform. Portability difficulty is a known pattern among Nintendo console players, given that Doom took about a year and a half to come out on the original Switch, The Witcher 3 required four and a half years, and Cyberpunk 2077 was only released in 2025, almost five years after its debut on other consoles.
Even with the Switch 2 having been on the market for a year and a half, delays persist, as exemplified by 007 First Light, which has been postponed three times and is now scheduled only for March 2027. While power limitation is a simple explanation, it is incomplete. Delays are attributed to at least four factors, the most crucial of which relates to obtaining the necessary development equipment, and not just graphics.
The technical challenge of the Switch 2 lies more in its narrow nature than in being inherently weak. According to a Digital Foundry survey, the console uses a customized Nvidia T239 chip, equipped with 12 GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 1,536-core CUDA GPU. Memory bandwidth is 102 GB/s in dock mode, dropping to 68 GB/s in handheld mode. For comparison, the PS5 operates with approximately 448 GB/s and the Xbox Series X with about 560 GB/s.
This bandwidth disparity is the most impactful factor. Reducing textures, lowering shadows, or cutting draw distance is feasible, but making a modern open world transmit data at the required speed is much more complex. Handheld mode, with one-third less bandwidth, is often where the port suffers the most difficulties.
Conversely, the Switch 2 has an advantage that the PS5 and Xbox lack: native support for Nvidia's DLSS. Street Fighter 6, for example, renders at 960x540 on the console and is reconstructed to 1080p by this technology, surpassing the Xbox Series S in certain scenarios. Digital Foundry also identified two variants of the feature for developers, including a lighter version called DLSS Light.
Therefore, porting work is not limited to subtracting elements; it requires rebuilding the graphics pipeline using a distinct tool, which demands time. The most detailed account of this process came from CD Projekt RED when adapting The Witcher 3 for the original Switch. In an interview with VGC, producer Piotr Chrzanowski detailed the necessary actions: compressing all textures to fit into 3.5 GB of memory, reducing character draw distance by 20%, simplifying shadows, recompressing cutscenes to 720p, and adjusting the audio system, all so that the game, DLCs, and expansions could fit onto a 32 GB cartridge.
Saber Interactive executed this task under the direction and knowledge of CD Projekt. The initial goal was to achieve 540x720 in handheld mode with around 30 frames per second. The result was delivered on October 15, 2019, four and a half years after the original launch.
A similar pattern is observed in Doom, released on the original Switch in November 2017. id Software did not perform the port alone, hiring Panic Button, a specialized studio, which followed the house standard: resolution below native and target frame rate halved, from 60 fps to 30 fps.
Before any optimization, the studio needs a dev kit—a modified console produced by the platform owner itself, essential for testing the game on the final hardware. In the case of the Switch 2, obtaining this kit has become the biggest hurdle in the development cycle.
At Gamescom 2025, Digital Foundry interviewed several developers, consistently receiving the same information: they wanted to release on the Switch 2 but could not access the device. John Linneman reported that Nintendo seemed to discourage development for the console, as several studios claimed they were advised to release on Switch 1 and rely on backward compatibility. Oliver Mackenzie added that even major developers were excluded from the access queue.
The most concrete case is that of Digital Extremes, which publicly confirmed it could not release an enhanced version of Warframe for the Switch 2 due to the lack of a kit.
This was not an isolated production setback. Studios requested anonymity, believing that identification could harm their chances of receiving a kit. The registration process is fast, but approval seems to follow criteria incomprehensible to outsiders.
Some interpret this as a strategic choice, and a Game Rant analysis points out that the console was available to the general consumer in six of its first eight months on the market, which weakens the idea of a purely production problem.
For developers in Brazil, there is an additional layer of bureaucracy. Consultant Rodrigo 'Chips' Scharnberg, in a column in Olhar Digital, described his experience leading the port of Starlit Adventures to the Switch: he received negative responses, including that they did not work with Brazil, forcing him to seek the dev kit personally in the United States a year later. This year was spent on bureaucracy before production even began.
With the kit in hand and the game optimized, another waiting phase begins: compliance tests conducted by each manufacturer. Here, Scharnberg makes an important distinction: the console owner's Quality Assurance (QA) does not reject gameplay bugs; if the character passes through a wall, the problem is the studio's. Certification only invalidates what violates technical and brand rules of the platform, such as a button icon outside the manual's standard or a failed communication with the manufacturer's servers.
The testing criterion varies between companies. Some evaluate the game completely and return an exhaustive list of errors, while others stop at the first detected problem. The practical result is a cycle that consumes weeks; multiplied by two or three rounds, the release can be delayed by a month and a half, without the game's quality deteriorating.
The last factor is the most mundane: the financial aspect. Success on one platform does not guarantee equivalent returns on another, and gross revenue can be misleading. Scharnberg calculates that of the R$ 10 charged in the store, about R$ 5 remain after platform fees and taxes. In publishing contracts, the developer's share drops to something between R$ 1.50 and R$ 2.50.
In practice, a game generating R$ 1 million in the store can yield close to R$ 150 thousand net to the studio, an amount that must cover the team and finance the port, a costly process that requires significant code rewriting to run on an architecture different from the original.
There is also a peculiarity in Nintendo platforms. Historically, a large part of the core audience owns a Nintendo console in addition to a PlayStation or Xbox, meaning the port competes with a version that the same consumer may have already purchased.
Additionally, there is non-existent friction on the PS5 or Xbox: the physical media of the Switch 2. It is estimated that each 64 GB cartridge costs between US$ 15 and US$ 20 for Nintendo, and the company absorbs this cost, ensuring that all its own physical releases come with the complete game on the cartridge. Most third parties do not absorb this cost, opting for the Game-Key Card, a cartridge that contains only the download key.
A February 2026 survey recorded 56 titles on Game-Key Card versus 23 traditional physical releases among announced games. Since there is no official audited number and websites use varied criteria, any fixed percentage must be analyzed with caution. Although the format has annoyed collectors, it sells well. Data from Deku Deals indicates that among 1,070 users with third-party physical releases in their collection, 735 had at least one Game-Key Card, and six of the ten best-selling physical titles were of this type. Interestingly, the best-selling third-party physical title was not one of these, being Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, with the complete game on the cartridge, the best seller of the console's launch week.
The cost pressure of NAND memory further drove large releases to the Game-Key format throughout 2026, including Octopath Traveler, Kingdom Hearts I–III, and Minecraft.
Two cases illustrate the entire situation well. 007 First Light was supposed to be released on the same day as the other versions but was postponed to the Northern Hemisphere summer about a month and a half before the May 27 debut. On September 15, 2026, IO Interactive announced the third postponement, now to March 2027, justifying that the additional time would be dedicated to performance polishing on the Switch 2, aiming for stable 30 fps.
Borderlands 4 represents the extreme scenario. Gearbox announced the postponement just over a week before the scheduled date, October 3, 2025, and Nintendo's policy forced the cancellation of all digital pre-orders. On February 3, 2026, Take-Two spokesperson Alan Lewis informed Variety that the company made the difficult decision to suspend development of this version, removing it from the publisher's future release list. The bitter fact is that months earlier, Randy Pitchford of Gearbox had stated that they were not porting the game, but rather building Borderlands 4 for the Switch 2, with the hardware in hand.
In contrast, Modern Warfare 4 arrived on October 23, 2026, on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PC, and Switch 2 simultaneously. This is the first modern Call of Duty to drop PS4 and Xbox One support, marking the franchise's debut on the Nintendo console. The methodological difference lies in the technical sheet: Infinity Ward led the development, with support from Beenox on PC and Digital Legends specifically focused on the Switch 2 version. When questioned about the conversion, Infinity Ward described the process as smooth, with no issues to report.
This reflects the lesson learned from Doom Eternal, seven years prior: Panic Button was involved from the beginning, and the Switch version was conceived together with the others, instead of being adapted later.
Nintendo itself seems to have understood the magnitude of the problem. In May 2024, the company acquired 100% of Shiver Entertainment from Embracer Group, the studio responsible for the ports of Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat 1 to Switch. In its statement, the company affirmed its pursuit of securing high-level resources to port and develop software, something rare for Nintendo. The acquisition of a porting house clearly signals where the bottleneck lies.
Although Nintendo does not disclose third-party sales, it publishes an approximate indicator: the proportion of proprietary software over total platform sales. In the balance sheet published on November 5, 2026, referring to the first semester of the 2027 fiscal year (April to September 2026), this proportion reached 76.6%, an increase of 9.4 percentage points compared to the 67.2% of the previous period. By deduction, third-party participation fell from about 33% to about 23%.
This data requires two important caveats. The first is accounting: Nintendo recognizes its software sales at the gross value, while sales of other publishers' games enter at the net value, meaning only the commission received. Thus, a third-party game of R$ 300 contributes a fraction of what a Nintendo game contributes for the same price, exaggerating the company's dominance. The second caveat is the comparison base: software revenues included in bundles with the console are classified entirely as hardware sales, which artificially depressed the 67.2% index in the launch semester. Much of the percentage jump is a comparison effect between a debut semester and a normal semester.
The concrete numbers from the same balance sheet demonstrate the reality of the hardware market.
