New James Bond game 007 First Light is “learning” from Hitman’s Switch 2 issues

We’re just over a month removed from the Nintendo Switch 2 launch, and one of the highlights is seeing games like Hitman: World of Assassination land on the handheld. It isn’t without some notable issues, though, such as bizarre texture pop-in or completely unkillable targets. Developer IO Interactive is working on fixes right now, while using this as a chance to ensure 007 First Light meets the studio’s high-quality bar.

Our Hitman: World of Assassination review is a mostly glowing write-up for Agent 47’s Nintendo Switch 2 arrival, even if some unfortunate glitches gave Kayleigh some grief. Speaking to VGC about a forthcoming patch for the new Switch game, franchise director Jonathan Lacaille shares that the IO Interactive team “is working on some of those performance issues right now, and they are addressing it over the summer.”

The only caveat is that the stealth game pioneers haven’t set a concrete date for the Nintendo Switch update yet. Of course, these things take time, and we don’t want any more unruly frame drops or targets clipping through environments – even if the latter is quite funny. Despite this, Lacaille expresses that it’s an ideal opportunity to enhance 007 First Light, the studio’s fully fledged reboot of James Bond in gaming.

Lacaille tells the VGC that these obstacles make “good learning for us to bring to [0007] First Light as well, so all of this will be learnings we bring to the next title.” The reveal of 007 First Light’s presence on the Nintendo Switch certainly left me shaken and stirred during the April Nintendo Direct, as I underestimated what Nintendo’s handheld could be capable of.

In some cases, the Nintendo Switch 2 outshines competing portable gaming consoles such as the Steam Deck or Asus ROG Ally, although the latter is my preferred handheld platform. Hitman previously relied on a cloud streaming version to run on the Nintendo Switch, but the upgraded hardware gives IO Interactive’s Glacier engine the chance to shine.

“It enables us to bring a game to as many platforms as possible with limited friction. So in that aspect, it’s quite easy for us, as long as there is a new platform coming out to bring a game on it,” Lacaille adds on the Glacier engine’s porting compatibility. Beyond 007 First Light and Hitman, Lacaille also heaps on the praise for Nintendo as a collaborator.

He says that for “as far as the [Nintendo] Switch 2 goes, Nintendo has always been a great partner with us […] we had brought Hitman as a cloud version on the first Switch, and now, the Switch 2 is a powerful device, powerful enough for us to bring  [007] First Light to it natively.”

So, while Hitman fixes are drawing faster, I’m focusing all my attention on the 007 First Light release date.

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