When it initially came out, fans didn’t think that the Nintendo Switch would be capable of handling strong third-party games. Alas, they have been proven wrong time and time again. And one of the studios behind that shift is Panic Button.
Over the past year or so, the studio has produced excellent ports of Bethesda’s Doom, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and the hit multiplayer game Rocket League for the system — all without skipping a beat.
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And speaking with U.S. Gamer, general manager Adam Creighton has made it clear that the team believes its potential is greater than some developers may realize. “It’s a really neat piece of hardware, and we’re learning more all the time. We work closely with Nintendo and Nvidia, and it’s an opportunity for us to do more and more with the hardware. It’s interesting, it’s still pretty early for the Switch as a gaming device, so I’m excited to see what happens on the hardware and the optimization front,” he explained.
The team is currently hard at work on a port of the hit action game Warframe for the system, which doesn’t have a release date yet. With that, Creighton explained that even with a slightly less graphical edge, the Switch still has a lot going for it.
“It depends on whether a game is pushing a ton of content,” he noted. “You have a title like Wolfenstein that is supporting so many languages, voiceover, and everything else, so there’s a lot more content there.”
He continued, “As people get us involved earlier in the process, we’re able to help them with decisions like assets and gameplay, and things like that with Nintendo Switch in mind. That has a benefit when it comes to what might come down the road later.”
But then a different subject came up, regarding what the next PlayStation and Xbox consoles would be like. Some believe that with these new systems, third-party games for the Switch may be harder to come by. But Creighton explained that it all comes down to how they’re approached.
“It’ll be interesting because who knows what’s going to happen with next-generation. Does one party do an even beefier, more powerful machine? Do they look at what’s happening with Nintendo and try to do that? Will they do both? Nintendo in previous generations has made it clear that they’re not competing on horsepower. Switch is a great example of delivering that without impacting the quality of the games. And they’ve made some great partnerships with Bethesda and others to bring triple-A content to their platform.”
He concluded, “Maybe when they evolve the hardware they’ll amp it up one area. Maybe that’ll be graphics or hardware, maybe they’ll add to the controller set so it has additional inputs similar to other platforms. So there’s a lot of innovations to be had.”
Still, we’re convinced that these guys are wizards. Wolfenstein II is an impressive tour-de-force for Switch. You can pick it up now, alongside Rocket League and Doom.
