Charles Tremblay, CD Projekt RED's Technology Vice President, has been fielding questions from members of the press—regarding the forthcoming Switch 2 version of Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition. Large portions of the company's Polish and North American/Canadian teams are concentrating on next-gen projects (respectively, Witcher 4 and "Cyberpunk 2"), but a smaller group has worked on porting a current sci-fi title onto Nintendo's NVIDIA Custom SoC-powered hybrid console. Despite arriving almost five years ago, Cyberpunk 2077 has remained a firm favorite—especially as a gauge of hardware capabilities, across PC and home console platforms. Since then, the developer's in-house REDengine has been dropped from primary activities. Epic's ubiquitous Unreal Engine 5 will serve as the technological foundation for future CD Projekt RED IPs.

In an interview conducted by IGN, Tremblay outlined the challenges his team faced when dealing with REDengine 4 and Switch 2: "we have very key people in here that know exactly how to make Cyberpunk run. Cyberpunk is built for x86 with old PC architecture. So, from the beginning this was completely different. Lots of changes had to be done at the engine level, all the shaders (are in a) different language. We had to convert everything, some HLSL to GLSL. (The Switch 2 utilizes) a very, very different architecture." In another Q&A session (with NintendoLife), the Tech VP mentioned a roping in of external assistance (from Hungary and Japan): "all development is being done in-house, with support from Yigsoft when it comes to incorporating the Nintendo Switch 2 specific features, and support from Nintendo when it comes to overcoming all the fun challenges that come with creating for new hardware."Pre-release analysis and expert guesstimates position Nintendo's Switch 2 handheld behind current-gen (AMD-powered) Xbox and PlayStation home consoles, in terms of hardware performance. Quite often, industry watchdogs have often compared Switch 2 to PlayStation 4. Famously, Cyberpunk 2077's (2020) launch conditions on older platforms was the source of much derision. When IGN asked about the Ultimate Version's prospects on Nintendo's forthcoming flagship, Tremblay reckons that it has an advantageous position: "it was very difficult for the previous generation of consoles. I think I will say that the most difficult problem was the mechanical hard drive, which is one of the things that's very important not to have." CD Projekt RED's tech chief thinks that faster data read and write speeds—courtesy of a microSD Express storage system—offer a significant step-up. In addition, he mused that: "the Switch 2 has more RAM (than previous generation consoles), which is also very important."

In his chat with NintendoLife, Tremblay discussed making the most of Team Green's "Ampere" generation graphics solution: "every platform presents a unique set of challenges but for the Nintendo Switch 2 version we were insistent on making sure Cyberpunk 2077 retained its unique visual appeal, in both TV and handheld mode. We used a lot of the tech offered by the Nintendo Switch 2's custom NVIDIA processor including DLSS and VRR to achieve this, and are very happy with the result! We think Cyberpunk 2077 looks awesome on Nintendo Switch 2, and figuring out how to best incorporate the console's unique features was also a fun creative challenge."

Signing off with IGN, he put a spotlight on Switch 2's unique feature set: "I think that on the handheld device, I think the experience is very good. I think the experience that we have, that is way different than other platforms, with the gyros, the Joy-Con, the mouse support. I think the whole package in general, I think it's quite good."


Nintendo's video description: "Whether you're stepping into Night City for the first time or returning to the City of Dreams, Adam Badowski and Charles Tremblay from CD Projekt RED share new ways players can experience Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition on Nintendo Switch 2."