The Nintendo Switch will be receiving its port of The Outer Worlds far sooner than expected according to a recent investor earnings call. Karl Slatoff, the President of Take-Two Interactive Software Inc stated that the game will be released in early 2020 for the console.
While the transcript does not provide any specific dates, Polygon reports that the Nintendo Switch version will indeed be released before the end of the fiscal year for Private Division, the developer of the game. This would place the release for before March 31, 2020, though there is no source to support this date and the claim may be not be accurate.
The relatively close release date should not come as a surprise when considering other recent news. On October 29 TheGamer reported how Obsidian was recently shown a demo for how the port would look and feel on the switch, and the result was overall positive. Co-game director Leonard Boyarsky described seeing the initial work and stating that “…we saw the proof of concept from the external team who was doing it and we were very, very surprised.”
The speed at which the port to the Nintendo Switch is being made may in part be due to how well The Outer Worlds has been received critically and performed commercially. In the investor call Slatoff preceded the announcement of the port by noting that “The Outer Worlds is exceeding our expectations and reviews have been outstanding, with GameSpot giving the game 9 out of 10, Game Informer 9.25 out of 10, and EGM a perfect 5 out of 5.”
Whereas the original plan for a Switch port was likely dependent on the reception of The Outer Worlds, now there is no doubt of its success and the teams are likely working at full speed to have the port ready for early 2020.
Now that a time frame has been established for the game, it will be interesting to see how well The Outer World looks and performs on the relatively low-powered hardware. However, with the recent release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition, no one should be surprised to see a great-looking port in early 2020.
As a result, the Nintendo Switch a continues to see its library expand far beyond the scope of what consumers might have thought possible prior to its initial release and should further encourage other developers to push the limits of the hardware to create ports of their games.
Now, if only someone would talk Capcom into porting the remake for Resident Evil 2, all would be well in the world.
Source: fool.com, polygon.com