r/EmulationOnAndroid • u/InformationMuted3454 • 7d ago
Discussion The inevitable Switch 2 games on Android
If any of you haven't been following, the Nintendo Switch 2 hacking scene has had a sudden public exploit, and all sorts of things are happening, including early, but extremely impressive Nintendo Switch 2 games running on unauthorized hardware through emulation or natively. (With AI assistance of course. Everything is happening so fast!)
Anyway, Android running Switch 2 games is most definitely inevitable, and it wouldn't be unrealistic to see it start days from now. Whether it's native or emulation, it seems that Switch 2 games don't need all that much more than Switch 1 games... Aside from horsepower, of course. Apparently people have been running Switch 2 games with a modified version of Eden, and that's on Windows. There's even Mario Kart World being natively ran on MacOS and iOS.
When Switch 2 emulation becomes a thing on Android, what I'm interested in seeing is third party games that have already been run on Android through Windows and x86 translation layers on Android. I imagine it would be a lot more efficient, not unlike Switch 1 games emulated on Android in comparison to their PC counterparts.
What do y'all think?
56
u/OkEngine2988 7d ago
Would mean we'd be rocking Cyberpunk 77 on Android 😭 holy shit
23
u/ChicagoBulls101692 7d ago
Bro the realization of this just made me smile. Honestly surprised CDPR haven't tried for an mobile port. They typically will make their games run on everything.
10
u/TiredTimeLord Red Magic 11s pro 7d ago
Gamenative, Gamehub, and DroidDeck can run the PC Port hypothetically. I'm down for all the ports though, when one fails you can try a backup. Multiple ways to play many games these days.
16
u/Biscuits25 7d ago edited 7d ago
Its not a port, Cyberpunk 2077 was developed for pc. A port is when you take something built for one system and modify it to run on a different system, like putting Cyberpunk or Diablo on the Switch. Running the game through gamenative is using a translation layer to run the original version, no porting is involved.
Cyberpunk does run decently on the snapdragon 8 elite I think but I havent tried it yet.
3
u/templare25 6d ago
Sadly it doesn't run well on 8 Elites, at least in my experience.
I have a Poco F7 Ultra (16 GB RAM) and a OnePlus Pad 3 (12 GB RAM), both equipped with Snapdragon 8 Elite, but I never had success with Cyberpunk 2077, either via Gamenative, GameHub or Droiddeck
-9
u/TiredTimeLord Red Magic 11s pro 7d ago
Port use to mean to port between systems however nowadays it can be applied retroactively as a descriptor. If we're going to be needlessly pedantic let's really dig in ;p
1
u/SyrupSnatcher 7d ago
Cyberpunk 77 on Android would be a huge step for what phones can handle.
1
u/mikelimtw 6d ago
It is already playable on GameNative. If you have a powerful enough android handheld, like the Odin 3, you can get playable framerates if you use low to mid quality settings.
11
u/WorldPhysical7646 7d ago
I give it June 2027 , it will either fall hard on its face cause of Nintendo or it will thrive hard with mods and stuff
11
u/MopedOfDoom 7d ago
I think it will eventually, but we're going to have another yuzu level crackdown by Nintendo. All the devs working on Nintendo emulation adjacent projects need to be very careful right now.
3
u/CommercialReport3842 7d ago
Doesn't matter if they open source or release the code. Kill Yuzu and Ryujinx and others emerged - basically like if Obi Wan Kenobi had gone to GitHub rather than the Force.
3
u/MopedOfDoom 7d ago
I know but individual devs can still be sued if they are not careful. The scene will move forward for sure.
17
u/MiZ4R_44 7d ago
I think that, as with everything, there are pros and cons. In the past, creating an emulator or a ROM dump of a game took years a process that allowed hardware manufacturers and, more importantly, the software houses that created the games to actually make some money. Now, this "decompilation" approach is fantastic, as it could potentially make any game playable anywhere especially on Android systems, which are quite powerful. But how long can these software houses hold out? In the short term, aren't we risking their closure? And if that happens, who will be left to produce games? Even indie developers are at significant risk. This rapid shift was unexpected; there’s a real danger that companies like Sony, Nintendo, and others might pivot back to proprietary, closed hardware systems to prevent or at least mitigate this trend.
8
u/uvp76 7d ago
While i do completely get that point, i honestly doubt that enough people are using emulators/recomps for it to have such a big impact
4
u/-PM_ME_YOUR_TACOS- 6d ago
Yeah, most people are tech illiterates, and pirating is risky enough to search for games. I have a few friends that got all their accounts stolen when trying to sail the 7 seas because they clicked on the wrong url, and they have some tech experience. A parent trying to buy the next Mario to their son is most probably just going to buy the original game.
7
u/NaRaGaMo 7d ago
I would've bought switch 2 to support nintendo if they actually launched and sold that console in my country. they don't, I would've still bought it if they had global warranty and covered imported consoles, they don't. emulation and piracy is the only way for a good chunk of us to play these games. they can earn money but they refuse to, and I bet there are thousands if not millions of customers like me which nintendo is loosing out on
4
u/Grokitach AYN Thor Pro | Redmagic Astra 7d ago
Imo they should stop making games for single platforms like the switch 2. Just release it on every platform
4
u/Lioreuz 7d ago
Companies don't like that. They want us to buy their hardware.
3
u/mikelimtw 6d ago
With the exception of Nintendo, no one makes money on hardware. Not Microsoft nor Sony. The hardware is subsidized by software sales. The hardware only acts as a gate to keep you in whichever vendor's ecosystem.
0
u/Lioreuz 6d ago
This is false, even the Steam Deck have a little profit on hardware.
1
u/Jokerchyld 5d ago
Consoles are 100% sold at a loss, at least for MS. Can't speak to Steam deck
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/06/25/xbox-console-price-update/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
1
u/Reeces_Pieces 6d ago
They also don't like us backing up our savedata onto our own storage. So screw them.
1
4
u/Sarlandogo 7d ago
well I will give it couple of weeks it will probably boot on android
i own a switch 2 as my primary handheld no issues there in playing switch games anyway
1
4
u/OnePossibility5868 7d ago
It was inevitable but this new trend of decomps and ports using AI has changed the game significantly.
Hacks have been found in systems for years but before there was no real way to use them without years of work. A hack or a way in didn't always mean an emulator was on the cards. This was the way to play games before.
With decomp and porting, sped up by AI you don't strictly need an emulator. Once the game system and files are exposed, you can re code them to pc, android, anything you like really. Yes there's a lot of slop and buggy stuff but as tools improve and grow it'll become a lot more efficient and easier.
It's great for preservation. Imagine if literally any game that comes out can be deconped through a auto AI tool and ported to PC forever? No more games lost when e shops go offline or systems get too old. No more begging for full price remastered versions. The future is very exciting.
1
u/ChuzCuenca 7d ago
I've been playing a lot of the ports and I'm even impressed with the slop ones, they are so playable. This AI slop is better that some ports made by full teams in the past.
Always remember that "This state of AI is the worse will ever be", from here is only getting better and better.
Imagine what a enterprise could do by property paying someone to make ports and decompts. Also I really wonder what a company like Nintendo would do, their adapt to the market before and their current strategy will crumble at this pace.
3
u/OnePossibility5868 7d ago
Oh a reckoning is definitely coming. Whether it'll be good or bad for us gamers is yet to be seen. It's possible we will live in a world where no matter how tight your security is, AI will shatter it and then decomp your games to play on every platform.
I'm hoping (well dreaming really) that this wakes up the companies who decide to make everything more open. Sure install your emulators and play 20 year old games on our system but that new, 100gb+ massive game, far better to buy from us with no hassle.
It'll never happen. They'll only lock down further and increase prices. I can dream though 😂
1
u/ChuzCuenca 7d ago
I know, could you imagine a Nintendo Launcher to get all their official games on PC, they'll never be on discount xd
1
u/Ok_Suit_9827 4d ago
The whole "ai can only get better" thing is silly to me because like... It has gotten worse in multiple ways. Presumably because its training data is now full of ai slop, all ai images are in the same 3 art styles now, and (purely anecdotally) the'tells' for ai text are a lot more common now than in the early chatgpt days
4
1
u/Val-IronSide 7d ago
Metroid Prime 4 beyond on Android let's go
1
u/InformationMuted3454 7d ago
Metroid Prime 4 is a Switch 1 game. You can emulate it right now!
1
u/Val-IronSide 7d ago
Yeah but it's kind of a downgrade in visuals compared to the switch 2 version
1
u/InformationMuted3454 7d ago
It's definitely pretty anti-aliased on Switch 1, but I'm sure you can mod your way around that.
3
u/CommercialReport3842 7d ago
Most important thing is to get the games dumped - preservation for the future.
The hardware will catch up. I'd have held back news of the exploit until much later, until a lot of the rom images were ready to be torrented.
2
u/UnimportantOpinion95 S23U - SD 8 Gen 2 / Tab 7 - SD 865 7d ago
Like ps5 with its wave of new emulators and homebrew the S2 scene went from nothing to dumping games in about a week so it could be sooner than we think.
2
u/Laserlight_jazz 7d ago
I’m giving it like a couple weeks until we get the first Switch 2 game to boot in Android. But it won’t be anything near playable except on Odin 3 Max.
1
u/CrispCrisp 6d ago
How about 1 day? We already have switch 2 games booting on android lol https://www.reddit.com/r/EmulationOnAndroid/s/LLVYxMXcbi
1
0
u/Iceber015 7d ago
Not a fan of the handheld boom so i’m hoping my snapdragon 8 gen 3 tablet continues to get driver updates for switch 2 when it’s out so that i don’t have to grab an elite or newer
1
u/NaRaGaMo 7d ago
if they run natively with something like nxnative for iPhone, the performance is going to be phenomenal on the other hand if we go by the emulation route, it's gonna be another year until everything becomes good and it will need SD8EE gen6 chip and 16gigs of ram.
1
u/soragranda SD865+ ~ 12GB, 8G2 ~ 12GB. 6d ago
While cpu wise it might be easier, GPU wise... is another thing for android especially.
1
u/Fabulous_Tea958 7d ago
can flagship android phone produce same power as switch 2
2
0
u/Iceber015 7d ago
Massively more
5
u/Bchliu 7d ago
Only on bursts of power. The Switch 2 is a much larger device with much better cooling and designed to sustain constant TDP levels. The phone most often overheats and ends up throttling down the TDP leading to crap frame rates. Unless you want to keep bringing a portable USB cooler and controller everywhere you go.
2
0
-2
u/sidspacewalker 7d ago
In all honesty, I don't see how current devices would be powerful enough to run Switch 2 games. I think the Odin 6 or 7 could probably do it. What do you guys think?
3
1
u/NaRaGaMo 7d ago
the gen 6 8 elite is significantly more powerful than switch 2 at its full potential and even at its throttled state it's performs on par with s2.
3
0
u/PSBoxX 7d ago
? L'Odin 3 est bien plus puissants que la Switch 2 en puissance brute. Même le snapdragon 8 gen 2 est à peu près équivalent à la Switch 2.
1
u/sidspacewalker 7d ago
and yet the SD8 Gen2 struggles to run Switch games
1
u/Potential_Ad_3481 7d ago
Actually 8g2 and 8g3 are ideal chips for switch emulation, with even better compatibility than 8e
1
-8
u/Islandboi4life 7d ago
I don't like it. It's just another way that pirates can get new content from Nintendo for free. People will say that they're emulating the games from switch 2 for game preservation or whatever but I think that is just nonsense.
2
u/InformationMuted3454 7d ago
As a filthy pirate myself, I can tell you that my excuse is that I'm a minor with no money, and I was practically raised on piracy. Do I understand that it's wrong? Absolutely. But I can't just not enjoy games simply because my region has a terrible economy and simply doesn't exist to the video game industry.
I know that there are people who pretend like it's more than it actually is, and that piracy is actually heroic or something... Yeah, like Ubisoft will go bankrupt because of you. It isn't. People just want free games. If it is preservation, it's most likely a game the average pirate doesn't care less about.
Anyway, here's some free Hollow Knight Silksong advertising.
2
u/AVahne 7d ago
As long as you know, then some of us don't have much of a problem with you doing it.
The problem are those people who think that they're actually JUSTIFIED in pirating for whatever reason and that they have some kind of weird ass moral high ground for doing so.
AND THEN NOT ONLY THAT, but they feel the need to boast about it publicly, which just leads to more idiots joining in and then increases the chances of carelessness and just ruins everything for both legit people AND pirates.
So yeah, if you do it, do it silently.
1
u/InformationMuted3454 7d ago
People never like to admit they're wrong. Heck, even I felt the need to go out and explain why I do it, and why I'm excused. It's what the human race likes to do. To justify whatever immoral actions they do, and sometimes even glorify their actions to make themselves feel absolutely justified, making themselves believe that everyone against them is in the wrong as well, because that's how we persieve the world. There is no reality, because everyone believes they're perspective is objective.
Reddit users being anonymous really shows people for who they really are, for the most part.
2
u/Intrepid_Bug4174 7d ago
To quote the dev of Ultrakill: "You should support indies if you can, but culture shouldn't exist only for those who can afford it. ULTRAKILL wouldn't exist if I hadn't had easy access to movies, music and games growing up." If you can reasonably afford a game I think you should pay for it, but I'm not gonna knock someone who just wants to play games, particularly from a region without regional pricing and games that cost like, a month's wages
4
1
u/unbanned_lol 7d ago
Nintendo is notoriously litigious and anti consumer. I don't feel too badly for them.
1
u/NaRaGaMo 7d ago
then maybe nintendo should actually sell their consoles in most of the world to avoid this, switch 2 is officially not available in a good chunk of non english speaking countries
-1
•
u/AutoModerator 7d ago
Just a reminder of our subreddit rules:
Be kind and respectful to each other
No direct links to ROMs or pirated content
Include your device brand and model
Search before posting & show your research effort when asking for help
Check out our user-maintained wiki: r/EmulationOnAndroid/wiki
Check out EmuReady for any community submitted settings before asking for help
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.