Nintendo has officially confirmed that the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition will launch on the Nintendo Switch 2 coinciding with its release day, which is set for April 2, 2025. This announcement was made during the recent Nintendo Direct event, where CD Projekt Red’s game director, Adam Badowski, unveiled a brief clip showcasing the game. This sneak peek has generated considerable excitement among fans, as it hinted at various innovative features.
Among the key highlights in the footage were the striking ray-traced reflections, captivating many viewers. Nevertheless, questions arise about whether Cyberpunk 2077 on the Switch 2 will fully utilize ray tracing capabilities. While it appears that ray-traced reflections are in play, other effects such as RT Shadows, Global Illumination (GI), and Ambient Occlusion (AO) seemed absent from the showcased visuals. Additionally, Badowski did not definitively confirm the inclusion of ray tracing, leaving fans with more questions than answers.
This article delves into the implications of the Nintendo Direct footage, examining whether Cyberpunk 2077 will indeed feature ray tracing capabilities on the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2.
Ray Tracing Potential of the Nintendo Switch 2
The new Nintendo Switch 2 is equipped with an Nvidia chipset that inherently supports ray tracing technology along with Nvidia’s DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) feature. This combination is crucial as it allows games utilizing ray tracing to maintain optimal frame rates. In a blog post, Nvidia has acknowledged the presence of ray tracing and DLSS capabilities within the Switch 2’s architecture, emphasizing how it enhances the graphical fidelity of contemporary games.
Given that the hardware indeed has ray tracing support, developers have the choice to implement it in their titles. However, it’s important to note that employing ray tracing can significantly impact performance, leaving the final decision to developers based on their performance goals and design philosophies.
Ray Tracing Features in Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2
The footage from the Nintendo Direct event hints at some form of ray-traced reflections, suggesting that lighting interacts impressively with surfaces in the gameplay display. However, it’s worth noting that the absence of RT Shadows, RT GI, and AO raises questions about the full scope of ray tracing effects included in this version of Cyberpunk 2077.
There’s a possibility that what viewers witnessed could be either generic footage or clips from the PC version, as the Nintendo Switch 2 is designed to be a more power-efficient device. The internal specifications of the chipset may limit the device to approximately 10 to 12 Stream Processors (SMs) within its GPU architecture.
With each SM housing a ray tracing core, the computations reveal that the Switch 2’s chip may possess only a limited number of ray tracing cores. As a result, it may only support rudimentary ray tracing capabilities, primarily focused on reflections. However, this is speculative, and actual performance may differ. We can expect more concrete details to emerge as the launch date, June 5, 2025, approaches, providing a clearer picture of what players can anticipate.