Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Hits Switch 2 May 12

If you'd told anyone in 2024 that the next mainline Indiana Jones game would run on a Nintendo handheld at 30 frames per second with full ray-traced global illumination intact, you'd have been laughed out of the room. The Great Circle is built on a heavily modified id Tech 7 engine, the same backbone that pushes Doom Eternal into 4K territory on bigger boxes, and it shipped on Xbox Series X|S with the kind of lighting model that pins serious gaming PCs to their thermal limits. None of that is supposed to fit inside a Switch 2.

And yet here we are. On May 12, 2026, MachineGames will release Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on Nintendo's hybrid console. The team confirmed the port back in February but kept gameplay close to the chest until last week, when previews dropped alongside a 15-minute footage capture that has every Switch 2 owner doing the same math: how much was sacrificed to land it here, and is what's left actually still the game everyone fell in love with on Xbox?

One-to-One, Almost

The short answer, per MachineGames executive producer Jerk Gustafsson, is "it is just one-to-one." The longer answer is more interesting. The Switch 2 build keeps the same campaign, the same eight-to-ten hour first act through Vatican City, the same Sukhothai jungle traversal, the same Giza stealth run. It also retains the headline tech feature: ray-traced global illumination, which was rumored to be the first feature on the chopping block.

What got cut instead is what most ports get cut: resolution, particle density, and frame rate. The Switch 2 version targets 30 fps in both docked and handheld modes, with dynamic resolution scaling that hovers around 1080p when docked and roughly 720p in handheld. DLSS 3 is doing the heavy lifting on both — Nvidia's upscaler ships baked into the Switch 2's custom Tegra silicon, and MachineGames is leaning on it harder than any other shipping Switch 2 title to date. Particle effects in heavy combat scenes (the Castelvania prison bust-out, for example) are noticeably less dense than on Xbox, but the lighting that gives the game its visual signature is unchanged.

Hand-Holding the Whip

The first-person whip — the most physical-feeling part of the original release — has been retuned for Switch 2's smaller analog sticks. Pulling a guard's rifle from his hands is now a subtle haptic event in the Joy-Con grip, with HD Rumble triggered on three separate beats: the wind-up, the wrap, and the yank. Gyro-aim is on by default but can be turned off, and the targeting reticle for whip-grabs has been bumped roughly 15 percent larger than the Xbox build to accommodate touchscreen play in handheld.

Touchscreen controls are also a pleasant surprise. They're not full-game touch — you can't play Indy entirely with your fingers — but inventory management, journal navigation, and the camera mini-game all support taps. It's the kind of small concession to the platform that suggests MachineGames actually cares about how the game feels in your hands, not just whether it boots.

The Cartridge Question

Here's the part that has Switch 2 collectors paying attention: the physical release on May 12 is a real cartridge. Not a Game-Key Card, not a download voucher. A 64-gigabyte cart with all 57.7 GB of game data on it. That's borderline unprecedented in the Switch 2 launch window — most third-party physicals so far have shipped as half-empty cards with a Day-One install — and it's the strongest signal yet that Microsoft's stewardship of Bethesda hasn't quietly trickled down to "don't bother."

The cart price is the standard $69.99, with a digital deluxe upgrade that bundles the September 2025 expansion The Order of Giants for an extra $19.99. Anyone who buys the deluxe gets the four-hour Pompeii detour Indy takes between the Vatican and Sukhothai chapters, plus the bonus archaeologist outfits the expansion shipped with on other platforms.

What This Port Means for the Switch 2 Library

Six months in, the Switch 2 has a reputation for getting first-party Nintendo bangers and fairly average third-party support. Indiana Jones is the clearest signal yet that the situation is changing. If MachineGames can fit a heavy id Tech 7 game onto the system at this fidelity, the door's open for genuinely demanding ports — Doom: The Dark Ages rumors are already circulating, and Nintendo's recent acquisition of an undisclosed third-party studio (announced at the May 7 Project Helix event but not yet named) is being read as Microsoft maintaining warm relations on both sides of the console war.

For most players the calculus is simpler. If you skipped Indiana Jones in 2024 because you didn't own an Xbox or a powerful PC, May 12 is the day to fix that. The previews are unanimous: this is the same game, same story, same whip, same Troy Baker performance, just running on something that fits in a handheld bag. The only thing that didn't make the trip is the Xbox Series X's 60 fps performance mode. Everything else — the lighting, the level design, the satisfying snap of a wrist-flick that yanks a Mauser out of a Nazi soldier's hands — comes along for the ride.