Square Enix & Blizzard Talk About Switch Support

The Nintendo Switch has gotten itself in a fairly safe spot in the market right now. Initial sales are good, and people are by-and-large enchanted by its portable functionality and surprisingly high-performance (except for a few hiccups and a few, uh, ‘misleading’ words from Nintendo regarding frame rate) However, whatever success it currently enjoys is in danger of losing momentum, because while Breath of the Wild, their latest Zelda game and blockbuster hit, is definitely very good, it’s already stopped trending, and unless Nintendo gets another amazing game on the system fast, they risk losing what attention they have and struggling to keep the attention they currently enjoy.

Fortunately, over the weekend, they got a pledge of support, and a tentative “maybe” of support, from two major publishers.

The former pledge of support comes from Square Enix, who has already ported their JRPG I am Setsuna to the console, but speaking with Nikkei, said that they planned to follow up on that with even more ports and original games, throwing their “full support” behind Nintendo’s latest mobile console. Square-Enix COO Yosuke Matsuda had this to say:

"In addition to developing new titles, we also want to port what we can do with existing game titles more and more. Nintendo proposes various kinds of fun. There may be other companies offering amazing ways of playing with 'Switching' characteristics of 'Switch'. However, since we have our way of doing things, we will make games that we are good at leveraging the functions of Switch,"

Square Enix actually had a rather long history showing enthusiasm and support for Nintendo’s more ambitious hardware choices. They made Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles for the Nintendo Gamecube, taking advantage of the console’s Game Boy Advanced connectivity. And for the Wii, they released The Crystal Bearers, which likewise took advantage of the motion control. It’s not surprising that they’d be just as excited for the Switch, even if it’s unlikely we’ll be seeing the Final Fantasy Vll remake coming to it.

But you know what might be coming to it? Overwatch, oddly enough, which is what brings us to part 2 of the article. Speaking with Express, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan spoke on the Switch, saying that while they’re open to the idea of making a port for the Nintendo console (which would, by the way, be the first time Blizzard made a game for the Switch since the 1998 N64 Port of Starcraft), it would prove a huge technical challenge:

"I think the problem is, we've really targeted our min spec in a way that we would have to revisit performance and how to get on that platform… and also, it's already challenging right now maintaining three platforms and patching simultaneously, which is something that we've finally been able to achieve. Our first couple of patches would come out on PC first and then later on the consoles. And a lot of that is because you're working with Microsoft and Sony, and you want to be compliant to their ecosystems. Adding a third ecosystem to that just adds a lot of complexity for us, as well.”

But he did stress that just because it wasn’t on the table now, it wasn’t off the table, either, and he’s very open to the idea. So we’ll have to see if that happens, and with luck, it’ll happen soon… although by the looks of things, Overwatch isn’t looking to become less popular anytime soon, so there’s no huge hurry.

Either way, good to see that Nintendo’s still able to court third parties. We’ll just have to see if much comes from it.