Canada-based developer Red Barrels conducted a Reddit AMA this week to talk about its survival-horror series, Outlast.
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During the AMA, co-founder and senior game designer Philippe Morin notably revealed that sales of the series on the Nintendo Switch are “good,” and already profitable.
Given that Outlast released on Nintendo Switch over four years after it originally launched on PC (and three years after it hit PS4 and Xbox One), while Outlast II came to Nintendo Switch a year after its initial launch, makes the fact that Red Barrels is already making a profit that much more impressive.
Further, when you factor in the former has only been on Switch for two months, and the latter just one month, the impressiveness of the news is even greater.
Elsewhere in the AMA, Morin confirms that a retail release of the game on Switch is currently not in the works. Further, speaking about the team’s next project – which is within the Outlast brand, but not Outlast 3 – Morin said he doesn’t see any reason why it wouldn’t come to the Nintendo console.
Further, the developer explained why the team opted for just 30fps on Switch, rather than 60fps like the games are on other platforms.
“Much like the DOOM guys, we were fortunate enough to have our game run at 1080p/60fps on PS4/XB1, so cutting the the resolution in half (720p is a bit less than half the number of pixels) and the framerate in half means you can run on a machine that is 4x less powerful, which is pretty much what the switch is in handheld mode.
Keeping the 60fps on switch would have been impossible. I mean, we would have had to cut so much that it would not have been the same game. Games like Mario do it but their lighting is extremely simple, most objects don’t cast shadows or anything, which obviously doesn’t work for a game that is all about hiding in the dark. They also barely have post-fx or anti aliasing.”
For more from the AMA — such as insight into the Switch porting process, as well as non-Switch version related tidbits of information — click here.
Thanks, Nintendo Everything.
