In May of this year, the first footage of gameplay within an environment built using Unreal Eng𒐪ine 5 was released by Epic Games. While its graphical fidelity doubled as a glimpse into the PS5/Xbox Series X generation's capabilities, Epic later confirmed that the engine could run on the Nintendo Switch too, in addition to a number of other popular devices including mobile operating systems.
That said, the Switch does run into problems with ports of games that were developed using versions of Unreal Engine older than its fourth. Despite that significant obstacle, developers Turn Me Up Games, in an interview with Nintendo Everything, they🍸 created their own proprietary technology that allows Unreal 2.5 and 3 to run native on the Switch.
Turn Me Up Games executive producer Scott Cromie and producer Louis Polak explained in the interview that this tech was first developed for a Switch port of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. This was the company's first port for the Switch. In bringing it to Nintendo's flagship system, Cromie and Polak ultimately developed a method for running Unreal 2.5 and Unreal 3 games native on the Switch, beyond just their port of Brothers.
Their new, proprietary technology drew the attention of a number of larger game companies, they explained, including 2K Games, who developed the Borderlands franchise. To prove themselves to 2K, they were able to develop a prototype port of the original Borderlands game that ran on a Switch dev kit in under a week. Thanks to that accomplishment, the company was given the task of porting more Borderlands games.
The process involved "modifying rendering and engine code to support the Switch platform and creating an online subsystem to support Nintendo services." They credit their a team of engineers at the c♓ompany for accomplishing this task, despite a high level of technical complexity.
Borderlands Legendary Collection, which includes Borderlands 1, 2, and The Pre-Sequel, was released on May 29 of this year. Completing its development meant not only developing proprietary technology to allow the Switch to run Unr𝐆eal Engine 2.5 and 3, but working around Coronavirus quarantine conditions. Now that the port ꦅis publicly available, Cromie and Polak have stated that they're open to future Switch ports, including from both the upcoming Playstation and Xbox systems.
Source: