Xbox Series S More Powerful Than Switch 2, Making Game Ports Easy

Although Microsoft hasn't yet announced any major first-party releases for Nintendo Switch 2, such as the upcoming Gears of War: Reloaded and The Outer Worlds 2, it's surely bound to happen sooner rather than later.

There are a lot of back-catalogue games that would be a great fit on the system as well, so it's good news that, according to one developer, a 60FPS game on Xbox Series S should \"easily\" be able to translate to the Switch 2.

This is coming from Eoin O’ Grady, technical director of Black Shamrock, which is a Virtuous subsidiary that's worked on the likes of Back 4 Blood, Grounded, The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition and Marvel's Midnight Suns.

In his interview with Wccftech, O' Grady explained that the CPU difference between the Xbox Series S and Switch 2 is heavily in favour of the Series S, but they're comparable in terms of GPU.

\"GPU-wise, the Switch 2 performs slightly below the Series S; this difference is more noticeable in handheld mode. However, the Series S does not support technologies like DLSS, which the Switch 2 does. This makes the GPU capabilities of the two consoles comparable overall.\" \"CPU-wise, there is a clearer distinction between the two consoles. The Switch 2 is closer to the PlayStation (PS) 4 in this respect, having a CPU just a bit more powerful than the PS4’s. Since most games tend to be more GPU-bound than CPU-bound when well optimized, the impact of this difference largely depends on the specific game and its target frame rate. Any game shipping at 60 FPS on the Series S should easily port to the Switch 2. Likewise, a 30 FPS Series S game that’s GPU-bound should also port well.\"

O' Grady says ports from Series S to Switch 2 that might struggle will involve \"complex physics, animations, or other CPU-intensive elements\" that require extra optimisation - but that's not to say a Switch 2 version can't be achieved.

Overall, this sounds like great news for bringing Xbox's first-party titles over to Nintendo Switch 2, including the likes of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Gears of War and even Starfield in the months and years to come. It appears the Xbox Series S has proven extremely useful for helping with Switch 2 ports - even if it wasn't originally intended for it!

Anyway, Microsoft has remained bizarrely quiet about bringing Xbox games to Nintendo Switch 2 over the past few months, but don't expect that to last long - an announcement for something will probably come out the blue very soon.