In other news that must have surprised absolutely no one, Techland confirms that the upcoming Dying Light 2 will not be on the Nintendo Switch.
Speaking to Wccftech in an exclusive during Reboot Develop Blue 2019, Tehcland’s CTO Pawel Rohleder shared some information on the upcoming release of Dying Light 2, in particular the implications of ray-tracing and Nvidia’s DLSS to the title. A portion about the development of the title on consoles then segued into a question with regards to the Nintendo Switch.
“The engine does not support Nintendo Switch. We are focusing on AAA content,” Rohleder clarified in the interview. “But I can tell you that we might have a surprise for the Nintendo Switch later this year. I can’t tell you more.”
It is still an interesting question to ask, though, I admit. There was a time when all the consoles were kind of still in an area where you could develop games and not have to worry about missing a particular platform. This was during the era of the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii; during this time, third-party support for all three platforms was very common, although exclusives themselves were still interesting enough to justify any of the three. As the generation moved into the next one, Sony and Microsoft started to chase higher graphical fidelity, while Nintendo kind of did what they did best, which was to find ways to separate themselves from the competition.
This did mean, however, that the company had to sacrifice one thing over the other, this time processing power over creative functionality. The idea materialized fully with the release of the Nintendo Switch, and while its exclusives are some of the best in the market today, you can not really develop other current AAA multiplatform titles for it without sacrificing graphical fidelity for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.
Techland seems fully aware of this, even noting that while Sony and Microsoft’s consoles are top-notch, they are still a few years away from what the PC can offer. As a primarily PC gamer myself, I can agree with his sentiments, but then again, it’s kind of an unfair comparison as consoles are usually chasing a lower price point by focusing on the casual market.
It’s worth noting that Techland does have a surprise for Nintendo Switch owners to come later this year. I’m banking on it being a port for Dying Light. While it’s almost five years old, Dying Light still manages to pull some numbers in terms of sales. This could be a great way to get new players into Dying Light 2, but on any platform other than the Switch.
Check out the full interview here, which is very enlightening stuff just for the talk about developing for consoles and PC alone.
Dying Light 2 is set for release on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC sometime later this year.
