How CD Projekt Red Got Cyberpunk 2077 Running on Switch 2

Nintendo’s big reveal of the Switch 2 back in April came with many surprises, but perhaps the most unexpected of them was that Cyberpunk 2077 was among the launch lineup. While the Switch 2 may be a whole new generation for Nintendo, the console is – much like its predecessor – relatively modest when it comes to hardware horsepower. Cyberpunk 2077, meanwhile, is one of the most technically ambitious video games ever made. Not only that, but the Switch 2 version is the complete package, including the Phantom Liberty expansion that was designed with PS5, Xbox Series, and high-end PC specs in mind. And so all this poses a big question: how has developer CD Projekt Red put Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2? Is this a case of forbidden blood magic, or has the studio made deep compromises to the experience? The answer is neither. In fact, this isn’t quite the impossible port it seems from the outside.

“We really thought it was going to be more of a challenge,” says Charles Tremblay, VP of Technology at CD Projekt Red. “But in the end, [it was] not that much.”

The road to Cyberpunk 2077’s Switch 2 version began back in summer 2023, when Nintendo met with CD Projekt Red to discuss its then top-secret new hardware. “At that point [there was] no Software Development Kit,” explains Tremblay. “Just more like ‘Okay, is there a possibility for us to collaborate with this hardware?’ I remember I was in the room and we just looked at each other. It was like, ‘Yeah of course we will check it [out], it looks like a really cool product.”

CD Projekt Red had, of course, already worked with Nintendo before. The Witcher 3 had been ported to the original Switch in 2019, although development duties were handled by Saber Interactive rather than CDPR itself. This time around things had to be different, in part due to the fact that the Switch 2 had yet to be publicly announced and so needed to be kept a closely-guarded secret. “It was way easier to have a very super small team working end-to-end with Nintendo rather than delegating the process,” says Tremblay.

Another important factor in keeping the development in-house was simply the studio’s knowledge and expertise in Cyberpunk 2077 itself. “We have very key people in here that know exactly how to make Cyberpunk run,” Tremblay says. And those people would be vital, as the Switch 2 version required many elements of the game to be re-engineered.

“Cyberpunk is built for x86 with old PC architecture,” explains Tremblay. “So this from the beginning 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 uses] a very, very different architecture.”

Another thing the team had to contend with was that the Switch 2 has fewer computational cores available than any other platform Cyberpunk has been built for, including previous generation consoles. “We have at least one core we share with the OS [operating system],” Tremblay reveals. That narrowing of resources means that where once there was core space available to enhance performance, that space now has to be used for activities such as decompression or IO operation. “This was one of the struggles we had, but otherwise I think it was surprisingly fast to get the game running on the platform. We were all super impressed.”

During the early stages of production, one of the main aims was simply to “try to figure out if [running Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2 is] even possible.” As it became clear that the hardware was capable, a key tool in ensuring the experience was as strong as possible was Nvidia’s DLSS system. This rendering technology uses artificial intelligence to upscale lower resolutions and generate additional frames, resulting in sharper images with increased framerates.

“With DLSS it definitely increases the quality that you can have, on the go and on the TV,” says Tremblay. “That being said, the technology we built scales very well across all the platforms.”

“We can adjust the crowd density, we can adjust the fidelity we want the characters to have when we switch levels of detail,” he explains. “So it was very, very easy. And, of course, the DLSS helped to bring the quality to another level, but I think all of those things together makes the port very good.”

Since the Switch 2’s hardware specifications were released to the world, the go-to comparison has been a PlayStation 4. That’s a solid enough base for a handheld device, but it does set off alarm bells when it comes to Cyberpunk 2077 – a game that infamously ran terribly on that generation of consoles. So if the Switch 2 is like a PS4, that means that Cyberpunk will be awful on it, right? Not so much. While the consoles share similarities, the Switch 2 benefits from many modern technologies. DLSS is one of them, but there are several other factors.

“It was very difficult for the previous generation of consoles,” Tremblay admits. “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.” The Switch 2 uses bespoke cartridges, but more importantly it supports the new microSD Express storage system that features faster data read and write speeds, “which is great” according to Tremblay.

“The Switch 2 has more RAM [than the previous generation of consoles], which is also very important,” he adds. All this means that not only does the Switch 2 version of Cyberpunk 2077 run better than the PS4 and Xbox One versions, but it also includes the Phantom Liberty expansion, which was much too demanding for old tech and thus was not released on last-gen systems.

Make no mistake, some extra RAM, better storage, and DLSS doesn’t miraculously turn the Switch 2 into a high-end PC. And so Cyberpunk 2077 on Nintendo’s new console is not the same experience as it is on a RTX 5090-powered rig. The content is the same – the same missions, streets, characters, and weapons – but the resolution and framerates are reigned in to ensure compatibility with the Switch 2’s specifications. Similar to the Xbox and PlayStation versions, there are two visual options to choose from: quality mode hits 1080p/30fps, while the performance mode targets 40fps at 1080p when docked, or 40fps at 720p on the system’s own screen.

It’s not just about resolution and framerates, though. The team at CD Projekt Red carefully combed through the game to assess what changes they could make to ensure Cyberpunk was more Switch 2-friendly. “We have people that are super experienced about the game and they really looked at what kind of parity we want to have with other platforms, whatever compromise [we made],” Tremblay explains. “We do a lot of iteration with them. So if we reduce the quality of [an element] and we play the game, we figure out ‘Okay, this is great’ or ‘This is not.’ And some of the people that have very, very good eyes can make those calls and we always try to compromise performance versus quality.

“We do have some people that are literally tweaking the settings, playing the games continuously, to figure out what kind of resolution compromise we can have, what kind of quality settings we can have to make the best experience for the players.”