Switch 2 Port of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle — Solid Nintendo's Hardware Third-Party Game

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has landed on Nintendo Switch 2, with Bethesda's port retaining the visual identity of the PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S versions at a 1080p docked target and 720p in handheld mode. The game runs at a locked 30 frames per second across both modes, leaning on DLSS upscaling to keep image quality in line with the late-2024 base release on stronger hardware.

The port arrives months after Skyrim's Switch 2 release in December, which drew sustained complaints about input latency that some users measured at a quarter of a second per button press, before Bethesda issued performance and quality mode patches that closed most of the gap. February's Fallout 4 conversion landed in stronger shape, with ambitious framerate targets and clean image quality. The Great Circle now sits closer to Fallout 4's reception than Skyrim's, despite carrying a heavier rendering load than either of the two earlier ports.

The visual cuts are concentrated in the predictable places. Shadow quality drops below the base release. Draw distance for smaller objects is shorter. Top-end ray tracing is absent, and the global lighting solution underneath the port has not been publicly documented. Character models and interior scenes survive the conversion well, which matters more for a game that runs most of its set pieces in tighter environments rather than open vistas. Eurogamer said the conversion is detailed enough that a first-time player on Switch 2 is not getting a watered-down version of the experience, although the Order of the Giants DLC is sold separately rather than bundled into the port.

Performance holds at the 30fps target across most of the game. Drops appear during cutscene shot transitions, where the camera language shifts more aggressively than the engine can keep up with, and during traversal through dense environments like the Vatican, where loading hiccups intrude. Handheld output is softer than docked. Finer texture detail and small-object clarity take the biggest hits when the screen scales down to 720p, although motion blur, sharpening options, and the smaller physical screen mask most of the loss in practice.

I think the more useful comparison here is between the Great Circle's Switch 2 build and the game's wobbly Steam Deck performance, because the Switch 2 version actually runs cleaner on Nintendo's hardware than on Valve's PC handheld, which says more about the optimisation work MachineGames put in than about raw hardware differences.

The control implementation carries the kind of platform-specific work that separates careful ports from lazy ones. Gyro aiming is in, which is standard for Switch 2 third-party releases and helps with the fine-aim work the game expects during ranged sections. Joy-Con 2 mouse functionality is also supported, and the mouse-aim implementation moves through small UI elements and throws targeting at a fluid pace rather than the sluggish behaviour found in some other Switch 2 ports. Metroid Prime 4 is the only Switch 2 game so far that has matched the mouse-aim responsiveness on display in the Great Circle conversion.

I see the mouse-aim implementation as the single most surprising part of the port, because most third-party Switch 2 games have shipped the feature as a checkbox rather than a properly tuned control scheme.

The wider Switch 2 catalogue gives the Great Circle port a useful peer group to sit within. Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Wars Outlaws set the technical reference for current-generation Switch 2 conversions, and Resident Evil Requiem rounded out the strong third-party tier. The Great Circle joins that company rather than the thinner ports that have shipped to a weaker reception. The presence of a viable DLSS pipeline on Switch 2 hardware is the throughline across all four titles.

The commercial logic underneath the Switch 2 release is less straightforward than the technical work. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle launched on Xbox and PC in December 2024 as a Bethesda title, with Microsoft owning the publisher. The game then sells faster on PS5 than on Steam, with Alinea analyst Rhys Elliott reporting 117,200 PS5 copies in the first week after the April 17, 2025, PlayStation release, 28 per cent ahead of the game's Steam launch pace. Elliott estimated that just under five million Xbox players engaged with the game, but the overwhelming majority of those played it through Game Pass rather than purchasing it outright. Current Steam sales sit at around 300,000, and Elliott predicts the PS5 version will eventually outpace the Steam total.

The Switch 2 port now adds a third premium-sale storefront to the catalogue. Nintendo's audience generally buys games at full price rather than waiting for subscription bundles, which means the Switch 2 release is likely to follow the PS5 commercial pattern rather than the Game Pass pattern that defined the Xbox audience for the first months after launch.

Microsoft's wider strategy explains the cross-platform sprawl. The company has moved several formerly exclusive titles to PlayStation and Switch 2 over the past 18 months, prioritising Game Pass subscriber growth over hardware sales. Bethesda released a PlayStation-only trailer for Doom: The Dark Ages that did not mention Xbox at all, a marketing decision that would have been unthinkable five years ago. The Great Circle's Switch 2 port is consistent with that direction, and the commercial result on PS5 has validated the underlying logic, even at the cost of the platform's former exclusive identity.

Image credit: Behind-the-Scenes Photos From Indiana Jones' Raiders of the Lost Ark/Esquire

Underneath all of this sits the production story for the Great Circle itself. Troy Baker, who plays Indiana Jones, recently went through the Lost Ark filming process and nuances in a wider interview about the game's opening sequence, which directly recreates the South American temple scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. MachineGames brought in cinematographer Kyle Klütz, who storyboarded the entire sequence before filming began. The team used two Arri cameras on either a jib or dolly track to mirror the work of Douglas Slocombe, who shot the original Raiders. The original 1981 film was captured on an Arriflex 35 IIC, a Panavision Panaflex-X, and Panavision C Series Anamorphic Lenses, and the production team consciously replicated that camera footprint for the game's tutorial.

The sequence took two weeks to film for what is a comparatively short slice of the final game. The team spent an entire day rehearsing both blocking and camera blocking before shooting any takes. Baker described the choice to open the game with a recreation of the Raiders cold open as a way to teach the player's controls through familiar geography, since fans recognise the temple sequence on sight and slot the tutorial mechanics into a frame they already understand. Baker said his own fear about recreating one of cinema's best-known openings did not factor into the work.

"My fear doesn't matter. That's the gig. It's 'Here's the challenge that's presented to you'."

— Troy Baker

Recently, Troy Baker said he is considering founding his own gaming studio and creating a video game in the future, citing Abubakar Salim's path from Assassin's Creed Origins to Surgent Studios as a reference point and naming Ken Levine, Hideo Kojima, Neil Druckmann, Todd Howard, and Vince Zampella as the figures he has learned from across his career.

Baker was first contacted in December 2021 by performance capture and voice-over director Tom Keegan. Baker initially tried to recommend other actors, since Keegan had told him the studio wanted "1981 Harrison Ford" specifically. Keegan insisted Baker take the audition. The actor agreed only on the condition that the tape be sent to Keegan alone first, with instructions to destroy it if the read did not work. Ford himself later approved of the result, telling Baker at The Game Awards that he would have voiced the role himself had he known what the team was building.

"We were both backstage and onstage at The Game Awards last year, and Harrison said, 'If I had known you were going to do this, I would have done it myself'."

— Troy Baker

The Switch 2 port now puts that production work in front of a fresh audience. The version is one of the stronger third-party efforts on the platform so far, with DLSS doing the heavy lifting and the mouse-aim implementation handling the small-object work the game leans on. The cuts are visible at a critical distance but transparent at a normal playthrough pace.

Read also, MachineGames shipped a free update to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, adding the Pankot Palace outfit, which recreates the formal Temple of Doom dinner attire complete with round spectacles and bowtie. The outfit appears whenever Indy is not in a forced disguise and does not override level-specific costumes for Marshall College or Nepal. All players can access the cosmetic through the Outfit tab, where pre-order and premium items remain in the same menu, alongside a wider range of bug fixes shipped with the same patch.