Although it's gotten off to a cracking start, the Nintendo Switch 2 might be starting to lag behind its competitors just a smidge, as indicated by the announcement of a notable third-party delay. On September 15, 2026, IO Interactive confirmed that 007 First Light won't launch on the Switch 2 until March 2027. This is a little surprising, considering that the First Light port appeared in a Nintendo Direct, alongside a 2026 release window, just a few days before the delay announcement.
007 First Light is one of the best games of 2026, and I'm not the only one who thinks so: the Bond adaptation has been a widespread critical darling and a commercial success. The delay of such a high-profile game to the Switch 2 is somewhat reminiscent of the Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition debacle: the 2022 smash hit was widely reported to have struggled on Nintendo's new handheld, and was subsequently pushed back from its planned 2025 release date. Nintendo has generally been given a lot of grace in that particular case: Elden Ring suffered performance issues upon its initial launch, and the Switch 2 already has better-looking games than Elden Ring anyway. But 007 First Light's delay sends a slightly different message.
I love FromSoftware, but let's just say that the news of Tarnished Edition's shoddy performance didn't exactly shock me. IO Interactive is a bit of a different story, though. This is a studio that has had a fantastic track record when it comes to optimization, and its work on First Light is no different. Just like the Hitman games, 007 First Light ran smoothly at launch across all platforms. If the developer is having trouble bringing it to the Switch, the blame might fall more on the hardware end.
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Worth remembering is that the Switch 2 version of 007 First Light was already going to arrive late, despite the game releasing almost a year after the console's global launch. Couple this with other unfavorable developments, like the indefinite pause of Switch 2 development for Borderlands 4, and the total lack of news regarding ports of popular games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Baldur's Gate 3 on the Switch 2, and Nintendo's new device is starting to look ever-so-slightly less valuable.
One of the major reasons why the 007 First Light delay on Switch 2 is so concerning is that it seems to echo Nintendo's struggles in the previous generation. The first Switch was already comparatively underpowered when it entered the market in 2017, meaning that it was unable to run a sizable portion of contemporary AAA releases. When a popular AAA game did make it to the Switch, it was usually as a massively compromised version (see: Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat 1). In other words, the Switch very quickly became the worst place to play most third-party games, if it could play them at all.
I should note that the Switch's lack of third-party support started to become more problematic with the rise of handheld PCs like the Steam Deck: Nintendo has lost its short-lived monopoly on high-end handheld gaming.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://gamerant.com/nintendo-switch-2-007-first-light-delay-third-party-support/
