Nintendo and Square Enix today announced that the Kingdom Hearts series is finally coming to Nintendo Switch. However, according to Nintendo, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMix, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, and Kingdom Hearts III will only be playable in cloud form.
The announcement of the series' full integration to the Switch comes immediately after Sora was revealed as the final DLC fighter on the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster, and the last DLC fighter to be included in the latest Fighter Pass.
The full price and release date of the games have not been revealed, but they will be announced at a later date.
The most recent and only Kingdom Hearts game to come to the Switch was Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, which can be bought via disc or download from the Nintendo eShop. Either way, because it's a theatrhythm game, most of the graphics are watered down to pre-Kingdom Hearts III graphics so that it's doesn't overwhelm the Switch's aging internal hardware.
With the entire Kingdom Hearts trilogy and the spin-off games bundled in them, plus the Re:Mind DLC for Kingdom Hearts III, they likely had to be ported to the Switch via cloud streaming so that the game's graphics could retain their optimized forms. Expect to hear more about the upcoming Switch titles over the next few weeks.
Other third-party games that were subjected to cloud streaming on the Switch are Hitman 3, A Plague Tale: Innocence, and Control: Ultimate Edition.
Up until now, the release of Kingdom Hearts games followed this pattern – the mainline games would release on a PlayStation console (or in the case of Kingdom Hearts III, the PS4 and Xbox One), and spin-off entries like 358/2 and Dream Drop Distance wound up on Nintendo DS and 3DS, respectively. Birth by Sleep was the only Kingdom Hearts spin-off game to be released on PSP. To see the Kingdom Hearts series come to the Switch at last, albeit in cloud form, is the best way to cap off Sora's induction into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and kick off the 20th anniversary of the series.