CD Projekt RED: Switch 2 Has A “Very Different Architecture” From x86

CD Projekt RED has shared an interesting insight about the technology behind the Nintendo Switch 2.

The company’s VP of Technology Charles Tremblay was interviewed by IGN about how they brought over Cyberpunk 2077 to Nintendo’s upcoming console. So far, CD Projekt RED has given an impressive showing for their game on Nintendo’s device. As opposed to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on the Switch, CD Projekt RED handled this port themselves.

That’s meant that they got to learn about Nintendo’s console and technologies before everyone else. Surprisingly, Tremblay is also quite glib about some of these technical details, even things that we wouldn’t think we would want to know.

When asked about the challenged of making the Switch 2 version, Tremblay mentioned this:

Cyberpunk is built for x86 with old PC architecture. 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.

To quickly explain, HLSL and GLSL refer to High-Level Shading Language and OpenGL Shading Language, respectively. In plain English, Tremblay explained that they had to reprogram the shading for Cyberpunk 2077, from a language that was better suited to DirectX, to a language better suited to OpenGL.

Tremblay certainly makes the Switch 2’s architecture a huge mystery, and that’s because it’s likely to be a new invention by Nintendo. Given that Tremblay also claims that the port was not as hard as they thought it would be, it’s certainly interesting to discover what this architecture could be.

For comparison’s sake, the original Switch’s operating system, codenamed Horizon, was an original creation that uses its own proprietary microkernel architecture. It’s partly an upgrade to the same OS in the 3DS, but it’s technically a new architecture. It’s also notable that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S may have different operating systems, but both are based on x86/x64 architectures. So it was definitely easier for CD Projekt RED to bring Cyberpunk 2077 over to those platforms than it was to the Switch 2.

But then again, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One also had x86/x64 based architectures, and they infamously could not run Cyberpunk 2077 very well, even after the updates. What this could all possibly mean is that Nintendo, perhaps working with Nvidia, designed the Switch 2 in such a way that even if Nintendo still does some things their own way, they have made a console that’s easy to program. We suspect that they’ve moved on from Horizon, and could be using something closer to ARM, even if they haven’t quite licensed ARM itself.

Coincidentally, a rumor came out yesterday that Nvidia is set to launch an ARM-based gaming laptop this year, in partnership with MediaTek. Is this project an extension of the work that Nvidia originally did with Nintendo on the Switch 2? If this is the case, 2025 will be a fascinating year for Nvidia and gaming, now that they have included Nintendo in that conversation.