Re: Factorio is coming to Nintendo Switch™
Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2022 9:35 pm
This is really good news!
I believe this is a huge leap forward in the development of Factorio. If the staff have spent the time to develop it to Nintendo Switch, it is well invested time, not because of the port to the Switch itself, but because:
* It is actually now ported to ARM, which means porting it to other ARM devices is not far away (Yay RPi4 and Mac M1/M2!).
* It is also ported to a console, which means new input options and soon also layouts for Steam Deck (and probably a slight review for Mac too because the inputs is not really convenient as is now, there is slight differences between a Mac keyboard and touchpad/mouse and a PC).
* Improvement in code, which means there is a lot of work done to combat bugs and desyncs.
* We will soon be able to build even larger factories, and faster too, because ARM is superior to x86_64.
* Having compatibility between two architectures means the leap to a third, fourth etc is less. I believe I'll see a Power and RISC-V port sooner or later.
There are some arguing that Mac users don't play Factorio, but in fact, I'm a Linux user which decided to buy myself a Mac M1 because the hardware is far superior to other x86_64 laptops. The M1 is comparable to a stationary computer in performance, however the amount of RAM is limited for me (8 GiB), which could be alleviated by compiling a native M1/M2 port. In fact, I'm so content with my M1 so I'd love to upgrade in the future, but not before the M3 has been released. And I do look forward to play Factorio on my Mac!
I believe this is a huge leap forward in the development of Factorio. If the staff have spent the time to develop it to Nintendo Switch, it is well invested time, not because of the port to the Switch itself, but because:
* It is actually now ported to ARM, which means porting it to other ARM devices is not far away (Yay RPi4 and Mac M1/M2!).
* It is also ported to a console, which means new input options and soon also layouts for Steam Deck (and probably a slight review for Mac too because the inputs is not really convenient as is now, there is slight differences between a Mac keyboard and touchpad/mouse and a PC).
* Improvement in code, which means there is a lot of work done to combat bugs and desyncs.
* We will soon be able to build even larger factories, and faster too, because ARM is superior to x86_64.
* Having compatibility between two architectures means the leap to a third, fourth etc is less. I believe I'll see a Power and RISC-V port sooner or later.
There are some arguing that Mac users don't play Factorio, but in fact, I'm a Linux user which decided to buy myself a Mac M1 because the hardware is far superior to other x86_64 laptops. The M1 is comparable to a stationary computer in performance, however the amount of RAM is limited for me (8 GiB), which could be alleviated by compiling a native M1/M2 port. In fact, I'm so content with my M1 so I'd love to upgrade in the future, but not before the M3 has been released. And I do look forward to play Factorio on my Mac!