More than five years after its 2020 launch on PS4 and subsequent ports to PS5 and PC, Final Fantasy VII Remake is set to arrive on the Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X|S in 2026.
In an interview, game director Naoki Hamaguchi discussed the challenges of bringing the title to Switch 2 and what it took to ensure stable performance on the console.
“The Nintendo Switch 2 has impressive technical capabilities. However, power constraints in handheld mode do reduce performance somewhat. A simple port wouldn’t have delivered stable results, so our talented rendering programmers carried out additional optimization work.”
To deliver smooth gameplay and contemporary visual fidelity even with the reduced specifications, the team focused particularly on lighting.
“I believe lighting is a key element of graphical quality and expressiveness.”
Compromising lighting for the sake of optimization would have noticeably altered character presentation and made the game feel “cheap.” For the Switch 2 version, lighting was therefore kept largely intact, with strain shifted away from other systems such as post-processing effects and fog. Thanks to that approach, the port runs consistently at 30 fps without sacrificing visual quality.
“When the hardware is used properly, players receive the expected level of quality. My candid assessment is that the Nintendo Switch 2 is truly an impressive device.”
Source: iXBT.games