Epic Games has announced that Unreal Engine 5.8 is now available, introducing a new Lumen Lite mode with improved performance on Nintendo Switch 2.
The developer explains that this “is designed to preserve much of the visual impact at a significantly lower GPU cost by using irradiance fields with probe occlusion. Twice as fast as Lumen High Quality, it means that games that rely on global illumination for artistic purposes can run on Nintendo Switch 2 at 60 frames per second. It’s also supported on PC.”
Speaking at Unreal Fest Chicago 2026, Unreal Engine’s vice president of engineering Simon Tourangeau expanded that Lumen Lite has made its fully dynamic global illumination and reflections system “viable where it wasn’t before” and that their work is “helping drive further nanite optimisation efforts” on the portable home console successor.
Nintendo Switch 2 has already seen many Unreal Engine 5 games come to the platform in its first year, from Bloober Team‘s Cronos: The New Dawn to Split Fiction from Hazelight Studios. Even Good-Feel‘s Yoshi and the Mysterious Book has showcased the game engine in a way that many would not have expected.
