Performance “not really the issue” for Switch, says Abstraction CEO

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Abstraction CEO Ralph Egas says that performance for Nintendo Switch “is not really the issue” when it comes to porting titles from PlayStation 4 and Xbox One to the platform.

“Switch is not as powerful as a PS4 or Xbox One. Everyone knows that,” Egas noted. “Having said that, the difference isn’t as big as the general perception would have you believe.”

Instead, Egas says that the issue comes from the size of the Switch’s game cards. “The 32GB carts are expensive, you shouldn’t be wanting to do that,” the Abstraction CEO continued. “So we need to fit everything on 16GB, whereas the standard game on PS4 is much, much larger.”

Abstraction is currently porting their dinosaur-survival, first-person-shooter title Ark: Survival Evolved to Nintendo Switch.

Egas said that the “hardest part” is finding all the “technicalities” and “quirks” that will help them fit a game onto the gamecard. Staggered downloads were mentioned as a possible solution. We’ve seen games like DOOM leave its multiplayer off the gamecard and instead require a separate download to play online.