The Witcher 3's Switch Port Took 1 Year To Develop

[Deleted member 249]

Digital Foundry: How long did this take to develop?

Piotr Chrzanowski: Over a year now. Well it depends on whether you want to add the business stuff, but then I would say it's around 12 months at this point.

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SOURCE

The full interview is great, and has a lot of details about the kinds of challenges the team faced getting this to happen (RAM was, predictably, an issue, and getting Novigrad to run on Switch was a bit of a pain), so make sure to read the full thing.

But one year for the port is mad impressive. Some technical wizardry at work here.

 

[Zassimick]

How it all fits on a 32 GB card amazes me a bit. I was a little concerned about the audio, too, knowing other Switch ports but it seems they've addressed those concerns.

One year is pretty quick to make it all work. I hope it runs well enough.

 

[Master Chuuster]

If resolution and sound compression are the only trade-offs they've had to make, then this is going to be a seriously impressive port. Saber Interactive doing some solid work here.

 

[KingE]

Good stuff. I find it annoying how people expect a port to switch right away. People just don't understand how hard porting or actually making games take. I can only imagine how much harder it's going to be next gen and going backwards to port for switch.

 

[SinCityAssassin]

Good stuff. I find it annoying how people expect a port to switch right away. People just don't understand how hard porting or actually making games take. I can only imagine how much harder it's going to be next gen and going backwards to port for switch.

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Tell Capcom to port 5 year old resident evil games faster then if the Witcher 3 can be done in a year.

 

[Deleted member 249]

Tell Capcom to port 5 year old resident evil games faster then if the Witcher 3 can be done in a year.

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And also to price them better...

How it all fits on a 32 GB card amazes me a bit. I was a little concerned about the audio, too, knowing other Switch ports but it seems they've addressed those concerns.

One year is pretty quick to make it all work. I hope it runs well enough.

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Actually it seems like audio was one of the areas where they compressed the most. I can only hope the quality won't be too affected.

 

[Oregano]

Not only taking on a project most would dismiss as impossible but in a relatively short timeframe.

Absolutely putting other publishers to shame.

 

[Piscus]

Wow, that's impressive

 

[AndrewDean84]

Such an impressive feat.