Shift Up is done playing coy. Its PS5 darling is getting a portable glow-up.
After months of whispers and fan speculation, the word is out: Stellar Blade is officially getting a Nintendo Switch 2 port. Shift Up, the South Korean studio behind the PS5-exclusive action game, has reportedly secured a development kit for the yet-to-be-released console and has begun early work adapting its breakout title for Nintendo’s next-gen hardware.
The news leaked today via South Korea’s PlayForum.net, with the official anouncement still to come.
A Portable Future for EVE
Released last year to strong reviews praising its surgical combat and glossy, hyper-detailed visuals, Stellar Blade quickly carved out a niche in the character-action genre. Think Bayonetta by way of Blade Runner, but with a Korean edge. It then made its way to PC in June, where it saw enormous success thanks to a slate of mod support and a community that turned EVE, the game’s protagonist, into a meme-worthy fashion and tech icon.
But the Switch 2 is a different beast entirely. While it’s rumored to be a big leap over the current Switch, it still operates within a mobile-first architecture. That means Shift Up will have to reengineer its visuals, control schemes, and memory loads to accommodate a hybrid system that’s not exactly known for running high-spec tech demos.
According to insiders, the studio is already hard at work optimizing the game to match the Switch 2’s more limited power budget. That includes rebuilding elements of the game to suit its portability, tweaking its UI for handheld play, and leveraging lessons learned from the PS5 and PC development cycles.
From Flash Hit to Franchise?
With over three million units sold and a strong PC launch that hit 180,000 concurrent users on Steam, Stellar Blade has outperformed expectations for a new single-player title. Shift Up clearly sees more than just a one-off hit: the game has been folded into a broader push toward building a multi-platform IP, with ports, DLCs, and crossovers with titles like Goddess of Victory: Nikke already in motion.
Whether this actually translates into long-term franchise viability is still up for debate. For now, the Switch 2 version looks less like a natural evolution and more like a calculated move to squeeze longevity out of a game that made a loud first impression.
Modding, Marketing, and Managed Chaos
The PC release didn’t just bring Stellar Blade to more players — it handed the game over to modders. From new outfits to fully adult content, the mod scene took off quickly, prompting predictable hand-wringing in some corners of the internet. Director Hyung-Tae Kim recently spoke to This Is Game about it.
“We don’t have any set policy,” he said in a recent interview, noting that once players own the game, how they use it is their call. He drew the line only at monetized hacks, saying he prefers a “culture of creation” over paywalled mods.
Still, without official mod tools, the scene remains limited — and the Switch 2’s closed system won’t make things easier. Whatever cultural chaos erupted on PC probably won’t carry over in full, but Shift Up doesn’t seem in a hurry to rein it in either.
The Bottom Line
Stellar Blade is making the jump to Switch 2, and with it, Shift Up is trying to prove the game is more than just a flashy one-off. With strong early sales, a PC mod scene that’s both chaotic and creatively rich, and a director openly uninterested in controlling player behavior, the move marks a real test: can a visually demanding, controversy-courting action game adapt to Nintendo’s more constrained hardware and ecosystem without losing what made it click in the first place?