GTA 5 fan-made Switch port runs just as badly as expected

If you expected GTA 5 to run perfectly on the Nintendo Switch, we recommend you lower your expectations, as the console can barely handle this fan-made port.

Once upon a time, a port of Grand Theft Auto 5 to the Nintendo Switch was thought to be in the works, but it turns out the idea was never even on the table. We’ll never know exactly why, but it’s interesting to speculate what the game on the Switch would have looked like. Well, speculate no further as creative modders have done just that.

In December 2023, Grand Theft Auto 5’s source code was reportedly leaked alongside details of GTA 6 and Bully 2. Alongside these came the ultimate fate of the GTA 5 Switch port. That didn’t stop these fans, though, who managed to brute-force the game onto the Switch themselves.

The footage above is the Switch running GTA 5 in handheld mode using an eighth-generation (PS4/Xbox One) version of the game with modifications to make it, at least somewhat, run for as long as it could before crashing, and the results speak for themselves with frame drops and poor graphics.

As one can expect, the Nintendo Switch can’t handle the first mission of GTA 5’s story mode, which involves a robbery in North Yankton, let alone the massive open world of Los Santos, which spans a city, mountains, and desert. Though it certainly looks better than the joked Switch port of GTA 6.

Of course, this is a fan-made hack onto the Switch just to see if it could even function on the console at all with no optimization. It’s reasonable to believe that an official port would run much better if not sacrificing graphical capability for performance.

It’s still unclear exactly why a Switch port was never developed, whether it truly was a technical limitation and the Switch couldn’t handle it, GTA Online wouldn’t get the support it needed, or Nintendo wanted nothing to do with GTA’s risqué content at the time. If it’s the latter, they’ve definitely changed their mind with the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition, released on the Nintendo Switch in 2022.