Blizzard Talks Possible Overwatch Nintendo Switch Port

[Steven Bogos]

Blizzard Talks Possible Overwatch Nintendo Switch Port

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Blizzard is "open" to an Overwatch Nintendo Switch port, but admits there are a lot of technical hurdles to surmount.

Blizzard has some good news and bad news for Nintendo fans looking to play Overwatch on their Switches. Speaking with Express [http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/789519/Nintendo-Switch-GAMES-LIST-Blizzard-Overwatch-min-specs-performance], Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan says that it is open to a port of the game, but would prove to be a huge technical challenge. The bottom line is that the Switch simply isn't powerful enough to run Overwatch in its current form, and the game would have to be altered significantly.

"I think the problem is, we've really targeted our min spec in a way that we would have to revisit performance and how to get on that platform," Kaplan said. "And also, it's already challenging right now maintaining three platforms and patching simultaneously, which is something that we've finally been able to achieve."

"Our first couple of patches would come out on PC first and then later on the consoles," he continued. "And a lot of that is because you're working with Microsoft and Sony, and you want to be compliant to their ecosystems. Adding a third ecosystem to that just adds a lot of complexity for us, as well," he explained.

But Kaplan is a big fan of the console, and stresses that "Just because we're not on a platform right now, it doesn't mean we won't reconsider it in the future, so we stay aware of all these things."

Source: Express [http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/789519/Nintendo-Switch-GAMES-LIST-Blizzard-Overwatch-min-specs-performance]

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[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Maybe if they stripped the game down to low rez textures, on low poly mobile game quality models, they might be able to get the game to run in a limited capacity. Maybe 2v2 if they are lucky. The environments would have be ultra basic too. Of course, they could make it a single player styled game.

 

[BarkBarker]

Guess it'll need a real......Overhaul.




I'm serious calling it Overhauled edition or something should it happen would be just swell.

 

[fractal_butterfly]

It won't gonna happen. They would have basically to make an entirely new game, and I don't know if the market is big enough on the switch for this to be profitable.

 

[Guffe]

Not even I think this will ever happen, and I am quite optimistic about the Switch.
But Blizzard, you could just throw in Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne on one cartridge and port those to the Switch as a start? prettyplease
Not sure how well it would actually work, but that would put the touchscreen to its maximal use. Pikmin is a RTS and that worked fine on the WiiU, so maybe it would be playable, would take some time to adjust from mouse and keyboard though.

 

[bjj hero]

Maybe if they stripped the game down to low rez textures, on low poly mobile game quality models, they might be able to get the game to run in a limited capacity. Maybe 2v2 if they are lucky. The environments would have be ultra basic too. Of course, they could make it a single player styled game

Or just.. You know.. Do none of that.

It's mostly hardware differences. Overwatch runs on laptops far weaker than the Switch at quite a good framerate.

Most of what he said made sense. Slash the texture res and the poly count, ditch most of the movable and breakable environmental items and the moving parts in the environment and back ground. It is a power issue.

 

[The Great JT]

Yeah that'll happen, and Persona 5 will get an Xbox One port.

 

[thenewguy512739]

They could tweak the artstyle a bit like Nintendo did with Smash 4

 

[RaikuFA]

Maybe if they stripped the game down to low rez textures, on low poly mobile game quality models, they might be able to get the game to run in a limited capacity. Maybe 2v2 if they are lucky. The environments would have be ultra basic too. Of course, they could make it a single player styled game

Or just.. You know.. Do none of that.

It's mostly hardware differences. Overwatch runs on laptops far weaker than the Switch at quite a good framerate.

Don't even bother with him. He considers Nintendo to be the worst because they don't make their consoles as strong as a high end computer.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Overwatch runs on laptops far weaker than the Switch

The Switch's hardware is last gen tech used in mobile phones and tablets.

 

[RJ 17]

Reinhardt confirmed for Smash. :^)

 

[EternallyBored]

Maybe if they stripped the game down to low rez textures, on low poly mobile game quality models, they might be able to get the game to run in a limited capacity. Maybe 2v2 if they are lucky. The environments would have be ultra basic too. Of course, they could make it a single player styled game

Or just.. You know.. Do none of that.

It's mostly hardware differences. Overwatch runs on laptops far weaker than the Switch at quite a good framerate.

Don't even bother with him. He considers Nintendo to be the worst because they don't make their consoles as strong as a high end computer.

While Zulu seems to have a hate boner for the Switch, lets not get carried away here. The minimum specs for overwatch requires 4 Gigs of RAM and 768MBs of VRAM. The Switch has 4GBs of RAM, but its VRAM is shared with the system RAM apparently, making the Switch well under the minimum Overwatch specs. The CPU clock speed is also something like 40% lower than the PS4 and Xbox one as well. Switch also has a much lower memory bandwidth, running around 25 GBs per second according to Eurogamer, while the PS4 runs a maximum bandwidth of 176 GBs per second

The current gen consoles already have to make noticeable graphical sacrifices to run at 60FPS, Blizzard could maybe get a significantly pared down version running on the Switch, but to get 60 FPS, they would likely need to go below current PC low settings. Like Blizzard says, it's theoretically possible but would basically require them to retool a new version tailored specifically for the Switch.

 

[RaikuFA]

Maybe if they stripped the game down to low rez textures, on low poly mobile game quality models, they might be able to get the game to run in a limited capacity. Maybe 2v2 if they are lucky. The environments would have be ultra basic too. Of course, they could make it a single player styled game

Or just.. You know.. Do none of that.

It's mostly hardware differences. Overwatch runs on laptops far weaker than the Switch at quite a good framerate.

Don't even bother with him. He considers Nintendo to be the worst because they don't make their consoles as strong as a high end computer.

While Zulu seems to have a hate boner for the Switch, lets not get carried away here. The minimum specs for overwatch requires 4 Gigs of RAM and 768MBs of VRAM. The Switch has 4GBs of RAM, but its VRAM is shared with the system RAM apparently, making the Switch well under the minimum Overwatch specs. The CPU clock speed is also something like 40% lower than the PS4 and Xbox one as well. Switch also has a much lower memory bandwidth, running around 25 GBs per second according to Eurogamer, while the PS4 runs a maximum bandwidth of 176 GBs per second

The current gen consoles already have to make noticeable graphical sacrifices to run at 60FPS, Blizzard could maybe get a significantly pared down version running on the Switch, but to get 60 FPS, they would likely need to go below current PC low settings. Like Blizzard says, it's theoretically possible but would basically require them to retool a new version tailored specifically for the Switch.

I got it. It just seems that there's such unnessesary hate for the console. All because it's Nintendo. They're not the greatest but it seems all the stuff that we praise all the other companies for goes out the window the second Nintendo is involved.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

No. It isn't.

Please, use the power of google before you try commenting again.

Oh... you mean like how the Switch uses a Maxwell core processor, instead of the newer and superior Pascal based processors?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

While Zulu seems to have a hate boner for the Switch

What? Just because I said that it runs on old hardware automatically means I hate it now?

 

[votemarvel]

I imagine they could get the game to run if it was permanently in Docked mode but add in how it loses computing power when used as a mobile device and they have yet another hurdle to jump over.

That's a big issue I think for developers when considering the Switch.