There seems to be an unspoken rule that certain games simply can’t be done on Nintendo Switch. Call of Duty: WWII, Destiny 2, and countless other games have shot down the possibility of Switch ports, often with no real explanation – it’s just an accepted fact that the Switch isn’t powerful enough to run these games. But is that really the case?
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Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is one of the few major third-party developed games coming to the Nintendo Switch, and it runs on Ubisoft’s powerful Snowdrop engine, which has been used for everything from Tom Clancy’s The Division to South Park: The Fractured But Whole. This engine is no slouch, and, according to Mario + Rabbids team member Andrea Babich, it worked just fine on Switch.
“Actually, we were really surprised about how easy the development for this system is. I don’t want to sound like a Ubisoft or Nintendo fan, but when we got the Dev-Kit and put the Snowdrop-Engine onto the Switch, these two perfectly fit together. The Snowdrop-Engine, which is our engine for almost everything and which we used for the last South Park game is so versatile that we quickly lost our worries about the development.”
Babich also talked about how easy it was to work with Nintendo itself…
“[Collaborating] with Nintendo [has been] working well. Maybe it’s because we’re super fans of Nintendo? We expected that there may be difficulties in understanding or cultural differences, but we were wrong. I’m not saying that there were no retakes or things to change, there were, but their focus was always on quality. Because it’s an Ubisoft game Nintendo never said ‘you can’t do this, you can’t do that,’ but they didn’t have to either because we were mostly agreeing.”
Yes, the Snowdrop engine is built to scale to different platforms, but that’s something all good engines should do. The Switch is also designed to work with the industry-leading Unreal Engine 4. The “sorry, supporting Switch would be too hard, we pass” attitude shouldn’t fly. You can make a modern, visually impressive game on the Switch if you’re willing to expend just a little elbow grease.
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle shows what the Nintendo Switch can do on August 29. Don’t forget that Amazon Prime members can save 20% when they pre-order.
[via ntower]
