Another Tomb Raider game has been added to the Nintendo Switch 2 lineup. During the most recent Nintendo Direct, Rise of the Tomb Raider was announced and released.
Following up on Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, this is the second entry in the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy. It’s the first time that Nintendo players can try out the action adventure game.
To learn more about the port, we caught up with product manager Anna Grant and senior game producer Kay Gilmore. We touched on a number of important topics, such as the actual porting process, the reason for not releasing on the original Nintendo Switch, and the possibility of supporting gyro controls for aiming in the future.
What sort of work goes into a port like this? How difficult is it to release a game on a new platform?
It’s more work than you’d expect! The first and most important tenet in our development process is to do justice by the original title. Players want the magic they remember and we deliver that on a modern console where we can take advantage of the latest advances in gaming tech – bringing games that were previously only playable on large devices to much smaller ones. The Switch 2 is phenomenal as a portable platform but that also creates a challenge for us to bring these very high fidelity, graphically intense games onto it. Running a game like Rise of the Tomb Raider on Switch 2 at 30 fps required a lot of work, and we’re really proud of the experience we brought to gamers in the final product.
Which version of the game is the Nintendo Switch 2 release based on?
Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration is based on the original Xbox exclusive version with all of the additional content that has come out since the initial release. In 2016, the 20 Year edition (what could also be called the Game of the Year edition) was released on PlayStation 4 with new content and DLCs to honor the 20 years since Tomb Raider’s original release in 1996. It’s 2026 now, so the Switch 2 version is our nod to a franchise that has made a major impact on gaming and culture for the last three decades. Here’s to another 30 more!
Were there ever plans to bring Rise of the Tomb Raider to the original Nintendo Switch considering it was a cross-gen game on Xbox 360 along with the PS4 and Xbox One?
We considered it, but ultimately the original Switch simply doesn’t offer the performance capabilities required to do a game like Rise of the Tomb Raider justice. The Switch 2 is a more powerful platform that’s given us the opportunity to port such a graphically-rich title and has a lot of potential for our future releases.
Along those same lines, since the original Nintendo Switch wasn’t a part of the release plans, did that make it any easier at all to put Rise of the Tomb Raider on Switch 2?
Absolutely. Simply put, the Switch 2 has a lot more to offer. Bringing the game to the original Switch would’ve meant cutting almost all the visual effects such as graphics, particles, fog, snow, tress effects and environmental assets. To bring it to Switch 1 would mean removing the immersive experience and changing too much of what the original game meant to players, and that’s not a compromise on quality we’re willing to make.
Did the team explore potential support for 60 frames per second at all? Could an update make this possible?
Yes, we spent months trying to get the game to run consistently at 60 fps. We heard players’ feedback on the Tomb Raider Definitive Edition release regarding the sacrifice of visual fidelity in favor of better performance, so we wanted to make sure Rise of the Tomb Raider was the best version of the game we could possibly get on Switch 2. Despite its age, Rise of Tomb Raider is a much more GPU heavy game than its predecessor. As a result it couldn’t run at 60fps without serious compromises that would have frustrated players.
