Nintendo Switch can’t handle Call of Duty

The Wall Street Journal Tech Live event was lively for Xbox boss Phil Spencer, who made it clear that Microsoft has high ambitions to break into the mobile and on-the-go gaming markets.

In an interview at the conference, Microsoft Gaming’s CEO talked about the company’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, saying he would “love to see” Call of Duty on the Nintendo Switch (via Tom Warren of The Verge (opens in new tab)).

Spencer said one of the key reasons Microsoft wanted to acquire Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard was to enter the mobile gaming scene. Call of Duty: Mobile is still doing well from a fiscal point of view (opens in new tab)so it makes sense that Spencer was inspired to take this step forward by bringing CoD games to the Switch and expanding operations into the portable gaming sector.

But is it even possible for one of the biggest FPS franchises to function properly on the Switch, given the vastly weaker engine?

Truly modern warfare

Call of Duty has long dominated the FPS scene. With a whopping 17 titles under its belt, the first-person shooter series has been praised for its crisp graphics, intricate gunplay, expansive maps, and excellent co-op capabilities.

While these factors have cemented Call of Duty’s place as one of the most popular gaming franchises of all time, they could spell trouble for the Nintendo Switch. Because the Switch port is unlikely to be able to maintain such high standards.

This is not a problem that is exclusive to Call of Duty. Time and time again, we’ve seen ports of popular console and PC titles crash and burn on the Nintendo Switch. The ultimate ugly Ark: Survival Evolved portfor example, it was so bad it needed a complete overhaul, and wrestling simulator WWE 2K18 never fully recovered after its Switch release was plagued by game-breaking bugs.

Byte bullshit

Another major risk of porting a game to the Switch is that the Nintendo console simply isn’t built to handle games of these sizes. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2the latest entry in the Call of Duty series, weighs in at over 100GB on PS5, which is huge a jump from the average 8-10GB size taken up by a Switch game.

Even games made for the platform tend to struggle; Bayonet 3 it weighs in at a modest 15GB and starts to lag thanks to the device’s slower loading speed, in this case largely due to the fast and frenetic action on the screen.

If the humble Switch can’t handle its own games, how is it supposed to handle the demands made by CoD’s heavy-duty IW engine?

Hope on the horizon

That being said, it’s been done before. One of the most successful PlayStation ports to Switch, Alien: Isolation went from taking up 8.2GB of space on the PlayStation 3 to more than doubling its size for the Switch port, and it worked like a charm.

Perhaps there is hope for a solid CoD offering for the Switch if, like what was done for Call of Duty: Mobile, a brand new game is created with the Switch device itself in mind.

This will no doubt take time and money to develop, but if Spencer and Microsoft are serious about bringing the FPS heavyweight to handheld devices, they may want to play to the Nintendo console’s strengths rather than waiting for it to go keep up with next-gen consoles and save Microsoft the potential embarrassment.