With rumours doing the rounds that CDProjekt’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt might be Switch-bound, the internet is whipping itself into a frenzy of tinfoil hats and speculation. In order to assess if a potential port would even be viable on Nintendo’s handheld hybrid, our friends over at Digital Foundry have taken a look at the sort of cutbacks and compromises it would require.
Using a PC with specifications closely mirroring the performance of your favourite Nintendo console, Rich Leadbetter has been running the game to see if ‘Switcher 3’ could be more than just wishful thinking. Check out his analysis below:
As you can see, things start out looking pretty grim, but with some tweaking to the resolution and other variables, Rich manages to get the game running at a level approaching ‘acceptable’. Of course, that’s not good enough for most of us, but as pointed out in the video, this is PC code and any potential port would need to be optimised to take advantage of every last drop of juice the Switch has to offer. CD Projekt also has a track record with impressive console ports in the form of the previous Witcher game on Xbox 360, so while The Witcher 3 on Switch would be a huge undertaking, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.
We’ve seen miracles before, of course, and the guys at Digital Foundry have already found Mortal Kombat 11 to be making use of the ‘boost mode’ opened up for developers in a recent firmware update, so perhaps this could be used to further improve performance. Again, this is all fanciful speculation until we hear something concrete from CD Projekt or Nintendo. Eurogamer’s Tom Phillips has got gamers salivating even more with the wording of this tweet introducing the video:
Does Tom know something we don’t? Are we all just clutching desperately at straws here? It’s tough to know with E3 fever making gamers the world over a little giddy. For now, Witcher 3 on Switch doesn’t exist… does it?
Are there any other ‘impossible’ ports you’d like to see grace Nintendo’s hybrid console? Crysis, perhaps? Let us know your thoughts on these rumours with a comment.