Virtuos talks about their dedicated Switch team, and why they're well equipped to handle ports

Virtuos certainly knows their way around Switch, as they've handled numerous ports for the platform. From Final Fantasy to L.A. Noire, Dark Souls to BioShock, they've done it all. They're a team that can be trusted to make the Switch shine with their ports, all thanks to their dedication to the platform.

In an interview with Automaton Media, Virtuous' Andy Fong and Lukas Codr opened up about their work on the Switch, and why they can squeeze something extra out of the platform. Check out their comments below, courtesy of a NintendoEverything translation.

Virtuos has worked on many titles for the Nintendo Switch. Do you have a dedicated team to port games specifically to the Switch?

Andy Fong: ...we have a full-time team of experts working on Nintendo Switch development projects. The Shanghai team is made up of 40 programmers, and the Chengdu team is 20 programmers.

Lukas Codr: Ports to new platforms are led by a producer who oversees the entire project. This person works closely with the technical director and art director who are in charge of the engineers and artists on each team. Depending on the project, we also have: a data manager responsible for creating builds, setting up development branches, and more; several designers who help tweak the controls and UI; and a QA lead.

Fong: ...we have over a decade of experience in developing games for a variety of devices of varying capabilities. In particular, we have experience porting games to mobile devices and portable game consoles. This allows us to not only manage the hardware limitations we tend to face but also plan for them.

Additionally, we have considerable experience with a variety of technologies, including commercial game engines such as Unreal Engine 3 and 4, Unity, and in-house engines, as well. That gives us an understanding of how to approach each technology and incorporate it into our porting strategies.

Codr: The majority of companies in the business of porting games to the Nintendo Switch have been progressively improving their techniques. At first, projects usually involve simple and safe optimizations. The reason is that developers are still in the midst of researching the new platform and learning its strengths and weaknesses. Our engineers and artists continue to level up from all of their experiences working on multiple projects. We’ve learned a lot of skills and have a lot of knowledge under our belt