During Gamescom in Germany last month, Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata seemed to hint at the possibility of the game appearing on the Nintendo Switch. He later retracted his original comments and simply stated that, while it was “a joke response,” Square Enix wasn’t “dismissing” the console.
When it comes to bringing FFXV to the Switch, some first thought maybe they would try using the Pocket Edition for smartphones featuring a chibified world that was announced last month. However, it seems that Square Enix is trying to get the original console version onto the Nintendo system. During a recent interview preceding Tokyo Game Show, Tabata told Eurogamer the following:
“We’re actually doing very specific technical investigations into what’s possible at the moment. Where we are at the moment – we’ve completed those tests and have worked out where the ground lies. We’re currently in the middle of the discussion and debate about what we should be doing, and how to realise that on the Switch.”
“The other thing – you see the mobile version, the PC version, one thing we value is to optimise the way the game plays and the experience for the individual hardware it’s on rather than a one-size fits all approach. We can’t currently announce anything – we haven’t come to a full decision on the best way to do it yet. We’re having very open, frank discussions with Nintendo at the moment about what they think is the best thing to do. It’s all under investigation.”
“Honestly, when we did the technical test to see if we could use the same native engine we used on other console versions on the Switch, we tried to run it there, the results weren’t satisfactory. It wasn’t what you’d want from a final game. It doesn’t mean that’s the end of that – we’re looking at the options, like the customisation of the engine. To give you an example how open those discussions are – we’re talking to Epic at the moment, about maybe what we could possibly do there, and if we did a Switch version maybe we’d be able to partner and do something there. Their Unreal environment is just amazing, and will be very useful. You have to have all those options on the table – without that it’d be impossible to make a decision about what we can do on that platform.”
Final Fantasy XV is available for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It will release for PC in early 2018.
