Here's How 'Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3' Ended Up A Nintendo Switch Exclusive

One of the surprises of The Game Awards 2018 was the announcement of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 from Dead or Alive and Nioh developer Team Ninja. What made the announcement even more surprising though was that the game is a Nintendo Switch exclusive, published by Nintendo.

Fast-forward to this week, and now Nintendo has shed some light on how the seemingly crazy deal manifested.

The insight comes way of Nintendo of America president and COO, Reggie Fils-Aime, who was representing Nintendo at The Game Awards 2018. Speaking to IGN, Fils-Aime revealed that previous collaborations between Nintendo and Koei Tecmo (parent company of Team Ninja) on Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors helped facilitate the deal.

"It did," said Fils-Aime when asked whether or not previous collaborations helped make the deal happen. "What happens in the world of development is you have companies who have positive experiences in working together, coupled with franchises being available, and the franchise owner wanting to do something with a particular franchise. And in this case, those three elements came together in order to create the opportunity for that game."

The Nintendo executive continued:

"And we love that. And we're constantly looking for those types of opportunities. It's the Team Ninja portion of Koei Tecmo that's working on this. They've got a lot of skills, and it really helped paint a picture of what that game is going to be. We're tremendously excited about it."

As you may know, this is the third entry in the Marvel Ultimate Alliance series, with the first two coming courtesy of Acitivision. As for whether these two titles will make their way to Switch -- they did semi-recently come to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC -- Fils-Aime opted to remain reticent.

"I really can't comment on that. That's not been an area of focus for us," he said. "What we want to do is we want to make this game a great experience, and certainly with all of the excitement around the overall Marvel universe, we think it's going to be a great opportunity."

A release date for Marvel Ultimate Alliance: The Black Order hasn't been divulged, but we do know it will arrive sometime next year in 2019. A price-point also hasn't been revealed.