When Elden Ring showed up at Gamescom last year, it was a disaster. Attendees reported stuttering frame rates, handheld performance that made the game nearly unplayable, and a publisher so worried about the footage that Bandai Namco reportedly even stopped people from recording footage of the game to avoid it being posted online. The game that players had been clamouring to take on the go was suddenly in serious trouble.
Following the Gamescom 2025 demo that showcased several technical issues in From Software's open-world action-RPG, publisher Bandai Namco delayed its release. After several months of performance adjustment, the game has re-emerged at GDC 2026, and looks to be in a much better shape. This time around, the picture was dramatically different.
A Quiet Confidence Returns
Bandai Namco has enough confidence to allow Switch 2 handheld gameplay to be recorded, albeit from an over-the-shoulder perspective. That single decision signals everything you need to know about how far the port has come. When publishers start letting people film your game running on portable hardware, they've stopped worrying about what they'll see.
The frame rate hovers around the 30-40 FPS range, depending on how demanding the scene was. In handheld mode, the game appears to be a solid 30FPS with a resolution either hitting or very visibly close to a native 1080p. That stability is crucial; frame pacing matters far more than raw numbers when you're playing on a screen you're holding in your hands.
The demo was limited to Limgrave, the game's opening region, which doesn't represent the full technical challenge of what FromSoftware has built. The demo was limited to the early segments of Limgrave, which aren't as graphically intense as later portions of the game, so there is potential for performance woes later on. But even with that caveat, multiple outlets described the experience as solid and visually coherent. The game runs great in portable and docked modes and is virtually indistinguishable from other consoles in terms of its graphical pedigree.
The Port That Shouldn't Have Been Hard
Here's the thing that makes this story worth telling. Elden Ring is fundamentally a PlayStation 4 game that shipped in 2022. The Switch 2 is meaningfully more powerful than PS4 hardware. In theory, this should have been straightforward. The fact that it wasn't raises questions about FromSoftware's approach and Nintendo's certification standards for the hardware.
The Switch 2 has proven to be a surprisingly powerful platform for big AAA games. While some sacrifices have been made, games like Final Fantasy Remake, Star Wars Outlaws, and Assassin's Creed Shadows offer a level of performance that prioritizes consistency over flashy graphics. Other studios have cracked the code. FromSoftware needed the extra months to do the same.
The delay ultimately mattered. What looked like a catastrophe in October now shapes up as a competent port, and for Nintendo fans, that's enough. The opportunity to play one of the generation's defining action-RPGs at 30 fps in bed or on a commute changes the game in literal terms. No firm release date has been announced yet, but with the work complete, expect an announcement sooner rather than later.