Wolfenstein: Youngblood almost didn’t make it to the Nintendo Switch, according to its executive producer.
The Nintendo Switch’s popularity is pushing its hardware to the absolute limit. Big blockbuster titles that were originally designed for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC are somehow being massaged to work on Nintendo’s little handheld using arcane magic and voodoo sorcery.
Or it’s just a team of people over in Texas that decided to specialize in making things work on the Switch.
That team is called Panic Button, a Texas-based developer that used to make games but decided somewhere along the way they’d rather have someone else do the hard part of actually making the game. Instead, they’d do the even more technically difficult part of making that big AAA game work on a budget system like the Switch.
Panic Button handled Bethesda’s previous ports including Doom and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, but also other developers’ games like Subnautica, Warframe, and Rocket League.
“These guys are magicians,” Youngblood executive producer Jerk Gustafsson told Venture Beat in a recent interview. "I’m always impressed by the guys at Panic Button, that they can accomplish things like that. It’s a miracle. We’re pushing the engine pretty hard in this game. Of course we did that for New Colossus as well.”
Youngblood uses the same game engine as both Doom and New Colossus, so it likely wasn’t too much of a stretch for Panic Button to get it to work on the Switch. That said, getting any game with the kind of visual fidelity to work on a system with such limited hardware requires some techno-wizardry that few possess.
For those not aware, Wolfenstein: Youngblood will pick up 20 years after Wolfenstein II left off. You’ll play as Jessica and Sophia Blazkowicz--the twin daughters of the main character from New Colossus--as they search for their missing father in Paris and help out with the French resistance.
Youngblood arrives on Xbox One, PC, PS4, Google Stadia, and Switch on July 26th. The Switch version won’t have a physical release and will only be available for download.
(via Nintendo Life)