Ubisoft ruins Star Wars Outlaws launch on Switch 2 as complaints proven wrong

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Star Wars Outlaws Kay Vess kneeling down with Nix on her shoulder — Turns out this isn’t an Elden Ring situation after all (Ubisoft)

Ubisoft’s silence on Star Wars Outlaw’s Switch 2 version is all the more baffling now that it turns out the game is not a technical disaster.

While a lot of people will be spending today obsessively counting down the hours until Hollow Knight: Silksong drops, today has also seen the launch of Star Wars Outlaws on the Nintendo Switch 2.

It’s the latest big-name third party port for the Switch 2 and as fans of the original release, we hope it finds itself a new audience. Although early indications have been that it was a bit of an embarrassment.

Earlier this week, word quickly spread that the Switch 2 port runs very badly but it turns out that’s not the case… which begs the question of why Ubisoft didn’t say something sooner.

For context, YouTube channel Good Vibes Gaming was able to go to hands-on with Star Wars Outlaw’s Switch 2 port while attending PAX West last weekend.

The team posted a video describing its performance as ‘rough,’ claiming it often dropped below 30 frames per second, and they were forbidden from recording any footage of the game in action.

It all sounded worryingly similar to the Elden Ring situation, which was playable on Switch 2 at Gamescom and also gained notoriety for how badly it ran, with Bandai Namco putting a similar ban on recordings.

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Outlaws wasn’t at Gamescom though, which seems a poor decision on Ubisoft’s part as the PAX West report has now had undue influence on early buzz for the game.

This is all very strange because now that the game is out, new footage from other sources shows it running perfectly fine on the Switch 2.

YouTuber SwitchCorner says they’ve found it ‘stable and smooth,’ with only occasional stuttering, and VGC’s demonstration has prompted comments about how it looks better than how the PC version of the game runs on Steam Deck.

Good Vibes Gaming has since deleted their original video and apologised for it in a new video that shares direct footage of the game on Switch 2.

Although it’s unclear how Good Vibes Gaming got things ‘completely wrong,’ we’ve seen it suggested they had simply played an older version that hadn’t yet been fully optimised for the Switch 2.

But that only begs the question of why Ubisoft was demonstrating an unfinished version just weeks before launch, and not at all at Gamescom.

Whatever the case, it’s bizarre Ubisoft made no attempt at damage control when Good Vibes Gaming’s initial impressions first started to spread. Especially as an official gameplay video is exactly what you’d expect them to release before launch anyway.

Maybe Ubisoft figured everything would work out once the game was in peoples’ hands. That certainly seems to be what’s happening, with members of the Switch 2 subreddit speaking positively of Star Wars Outlaws and recommending the port.

Or maybe Ubisoft wasn’t particularly bothered considering it had already dismissed Star Wars Outlaws as a failure and scrapped plans for a sequel.

Regardless, Star Wars Outlaws is continuing the trend of very solid Switch 2 ports, following examples like Cyberpunk 2077 and Yakuza 0. Combined with Final Fantasy 7 Remake later this year, there seems to be little excuse for any future third-party ports to look or run poorly on the console.