Elden Ring Nintendo Switch 2 port performance is allegedly so bad that Bandai Namco is locking down footage

One of the biggest games during the Nintendo Switch 2 reveal was Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition, a new port of FromSoftware’s open-world Soulsborne game. 

Announced alongside The Duskbloods, an upcoming FromSoftware PvPvE Switch 2 exclusive, fans of Nintendo’s new handheld were excited to get a stab at playing Elden Ring on the go. Unfortunately, that excitement may need to be bottled for a while. 

Elden Ring on Switch 2 is in a rough state 

Bandai Namco’s upcoming Switch 2 port of Elden Ring is currently playable at Gamescom, and numerous fans, content creators and journalists have been treated to a play session. However, no footage is allowed to be captured from the upcoming port. 

As it turns out, that may be due to the shocking state of the game’s performance at the time of writing. While the game may be massively improved by launch, those who have played the game have criticised the heavily botched frame rate of the new port.  

In a recent video, Nintendo Life explained that the game feels similar to the N64 version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in the open world with frame rates dropping below 20 frames-per-second. 

“It’s really bad, and I understand why they don’t want you to see this, because wowie zowie, it is terrible,” explained Felix Sanchez who had time with the port. “Of course, you’re never going to see the light of this—maybe it will just release in that state, but I can’t imagine they will do that—It was like playing Ocarina of Time. It was like 20 frames per second, sometimes I was like, ‘This has dropped 15 frames per second.’”

This claim was backed up by IGN who called the current performance in handheld mode a “disaster”, saying they “came away very disappointed with the game’s performance”. 

“Frame rate drops were significant when turning the camera whilst exploring outside of the tutorial area, and this, combined with a confusing button layout on Switch 2, made combat confusing and exploration fairly dispiriting,” they explained. “We weren’t allowed to record gameplay at the booth, probably due to this fact.”

Elden Ring isn’t the only major release coming to Nintendo Switch 2 with performance issues. Ubisoft’s upcoming port of Star Wars Outlaws also looks very rough with significant performance issues. 

However, Elden Ring is a cross-gen game available on the 12-year-old PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles and somehow sticks to a higher level of performance on those machines. As it stands, the current level of performance of the game on Nintendo Switch 2 is simply not acceptable.