Port Factory: Built Around the Reality of Shipping Games

We could have filled the Insights section of this site with individual case studies about every game we have worked on over the past few months. There is certainly plenty to talk about: platform integration, controller adaptation, certification, performance optimisation, UI changes and all the small technical decisions that separate a working build from a console-ready game.

But for our first proper update, we wanted to take a slightly wider view.

Port Factory is still a young company. 2026 is our first official year of operation, but the idea behind the business was already taking shape well before we formally put a name around it.

The seed was Bulb Boy 2 on Nintendo Switch.

It began as a relatively straightforward porting project, but it also started a much broader conversation between the people who would eventually become Port Factory. We were looking at the practical realities of bringing independent games to console: what developers could afford, what different games could realistically earn, which platforms made commercial sense and how much unnecessary complexity could be removed from the process.

That project gradually became something bigger than a single port.

Since then, we have been privileged to work on a fantastically varied collection of games.

We brought Grim Trials to Nintendo Switch, worked on the PlayStation 5 version of 1998: The Toll Keeper Story, and took on Tingus Goose across multiple console platforms.

Each has presented a completely different set of challenges.

There really is no such thing as a standard port.

A mechanically simple game can have complicated platform requirements. A visually modest game can uncover unexpected performance issues. A title that feels perfectly natural with a mouse can require considerable thought when translated to a controller. Certification requirements can challenge assumptions buried deep inside a project that nobody ever needed to question on PC.

And sometimes the job is considerably more fundamental.

Our biggest technical challenge so far is underway now. a title originally built using Adventure Game Studio, an engine designed primarily around traditional PC adventure games.

Rather than rewriting the game from scratch, our work involves reconfiguring the way the title runs so that its original game logic and presentation can coexist with the requirements of modern console platforms. That means creating a structure capable of handling console input, platform services, saves, trophies, lifecycle management and certification requirements while preserving the game that the developer originally created.

And it needs to work reliably across three different console ecosystems.

Projects like this are exactly why we built Port Factory.

Porting is not a production line

The name might suggest otherwise, but it is our firm belief that these projects should not be treated like a commodity.

Games are too different.

Their audiences are different. Their technology is different. Their price points are different. Their commercial potential is different.

That is why we have resisted building the business around a rigid price-per-platform model.

Instead, we try to understand the game first.

How has it performed on PC? What kind of audience does it have? Which consoles are the most natural fit? What level of engineering work is required? What is the likely opportunity on each platform?

Only then does it make sense to work out what the port should cost.

For us, the objective is not simply to produce a PlayStation build, an Xbox build or a Nintendo build. It is to find a commercially sensible route that allows a developer to reach as many viable platforms as possible without making the economics of the project impossible before it begins.

That approach has become one of the defining principles of Port Factory.

Building Port Factory from Four Perspectives

One of the more interesting parts of establishing Port Factory has been that we have not done it in isolation.

Our four shareholders are based across South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Australia, and each of us has come to Port Factory from a different part of the games business. Between us there is experience in publishing, independent development, production, business development, platform relations, marketing and taking games from PC through to console release.

We are not currently building original games at Port Factory. Instead, the company has grown out of the work we are already doing around games: helping developers publish them, market them, prepare them for new platforms and ultimately get them into the hands of more players.

That background has had a significant influence on how Port Factory operates.

Processes that can appear straightforward on paper become much more meaningful when you are dealing with real repositories, real platform submissions, real certification problems and real release dates.

Repository management matters.

Platform communication matters.

The way responsibility is divided between the original developer, the porting team and the publisher matters.

And certification is not something that suddenly starts once development has finished. Decisions made much earlier in the port can determine whether the final submission is straightforward or unnecessarily difficult.

Working across publishing and development has also taught us to look at porting as more than an engineering exercise.

Engineering is obviously at the centre of what Port Factory does, but every technical decision exists inside a commercial one.

Does this game have an audience on this platform?

Can work completed for one console reduce the cost of bringing it to another?

Is there a simpler technical solution that achieves the same result?

Most importantly, does the cost of the work make sense relative to what the game can reasonably be expected to earn?

Those are questions we have encountered repeatedly from different sides of the industry. Some of us have commissioned ports. Some have developed games. Some have managed production and publishing. Some have had to decide whether a porting proposal made financial sense at all.

Port Factory brings those perspectives together.

With each project we are refining the way we work: creating reusable systems, improving testing and submission processes, strengthening our platform knowledge and identifying the parts of console development that can be standardised without pretending that every game is the same.

That combination of technical execution, publishing experience and commercial judgement is increasingly becoming the foundation of Port Factory.

What comes next

We are still at the beginning.

There will be individual case studies. Some of the projects we have worked on contain technical problems worth exploring in considerably more depth, and we want Insights to become a place where we can talk openly about what actually goes into bringing games to console.

But it seemed appropriate to begin with the bigger picture.

Port Factory started with one game and a conversation about whether there might be a better way to do this.

A few months later, that conversation has become a company, a growing engineering pipeline and a portfolio of projects that range from small independent Switch titles to multi-platform releases and technically unconventional games running on engines never originally designed with modern consoles in mind.

We are growing with every one of them.

And that, more than anything, is what the first year of Port Factory has been about.