One of the most shocking announcements regarding upcoming Switch games was that id Software’s excellent reboot of DOOM from last year would be hitting Nintendo’s hybrid. It was shocking because DOOM is a rather technically intensive game, and the Switch, while powerful for a mobile platform, is underpowered compared to the Xbox One and PS4.
Nonetheless, here we are- the game is coming to the Switch, in spite of some concessions made due to its hardware. Speaking to GamesRadar, Adam Creighto, the Director of Development at Panic Button, the folks bringing the game over to the platform, discussed how a large part of more third parties lining up with Switch support has to do with Nintendo’s greatly improved development environment.
“We have a long history developing for Nintendo hardware, and the Nintendo Switch has far better development tools than previous generations. The tools are integrated with Visual Studio, which is new for this generation of hardware, and being able to write and debug code through VS is an enormous improvement,” he said.
He also added that Nintendo is conscientious with updating the Switch’s SDKs constantly. “Process and tools-wise, other consoles have arguably catered explicitly to third-party development for a longer period of time, over multiple hardware generations- That said, we’ve seen the ‘gold standard’ in game developer support flip from one generation to the next, we are early in the Switch’s development cycle, and the SDK and tools themselves are constantly getting big improvements,” he said.
He added that while the software environment, and id Tech 6’s scalability, made a Switch port easier than expected, it was still ‘wicked hard’ to get the game running on the hardware at what they felt was a satisfactory level. But it looks like they managed to get it done- hopefully Switch owners give the game a go when it launches on November 10 for the platform.
