If Ori and the Will of the Wisps gets ported to Switch, don’t expect 60 fps, says dev

An Ori and the Will of the Wisps Nintendo Switch port has not been ruled out, but it would be harder than the original to hit 60fps on that platform, according to Moon Studios lead engineer Gennadiy Korol, who addressed the matter in a Reddit AMA about the franchise. “We love the Switch,” said Korol, who worked on porting Ori and the Blind Forest port to the Nintendo platform, which works surprisingly well and with very few technical compromises when compared with the PC and Xbox One versions.

Also, that version retained the 60 fps frame rate from the original release. However, “Right now we don’t have anything to share when it comes to Ori and the Will of the Wisps port,” he said. The IP is owned by Microsoft now, and a Switch port could happen only if they greenlight the operation.

Similar ideas had been expressed in the recent past, so this doesn’t come as a surprise. Korol also mentioned that “if it were to ever happen, though, I can tell you that it would be an extremely difficult port to make run at 60 fps, that’s for sure!”

Frame rate has not been mentioned by chance, as Ori and the Will of the Wisps has certain sections that struggle to keep 60fps even on Xbox One X, a much more powerful platform than Nintendo Switch. Even loading the map prompts a little freeze on the screen on console, which is rather annoying, considering that the game is technically aiming for 60fps.

This is also because the game is three times bigger than the original in terms of map extension and density, which makes it harder to handle for any hardware despite being showcased in a 2D fashion. So, while a Switch port is not out of Moon Studio’s plans for the future, it could have to be downscaled to 30 fps, or to wait for a more powerful Nintendo platform, to happen.