South Park: The Fractured But Whole may come to Nintendo Switch, if a recent Australian retail listing is any indication. Australian entertainment outlet Sanity has a product page for South Park Fractured But Whole with a March 13 release date for the Nintendo Switch.
Just like most retail listings of unreleased games, this one should be taken with a grain of salt. While the March 13 date sounds possible because games are often released on Tuesdays in Australia, there’s plenty of odd stuff about the source as well. For one, while it’s a minor detail, the page’s name is technically incorrect—it doesn’t include the colon after “Park” or the “The” in The Fractured But Whole. The listing gives off a slightly sloppy vibe.
It’s also worth noting that, even though Sanity is still a large retailer in the Australian region, its potential credibility is immediately questionable. Unlike GameStop or GAME, Sanity isn’t the kind of store that specializes in software. As such, its connection to developers and publishers that possess this sort of release detail isn’t strong.
What’s more, if South Park: The Fractured But Whole for Nintendo Switch releases as soon as March 13, wouldn’t this be something Nintendo would have featured in the recent mini-Direct? This listing could be genuine, but there’s plenty of reason to think twice about its validity. On the other hand, given Nintendo’s close ties to Ubisoft, a port doesn’t sound all that crazy either.
Whether this potential retail leak is true or not, rumors of South Park: The Fractured But Whole coming to Nintendo Switch have floated in the ether for about a year. Shortly after the Switch’s release last March, the official South Park Twitter account tweeted a GIF of Cartman in a snowstorm with the caption, “Nin-ten-do. I'm coming. I'm coming, Nin-ten-do.” While also a reference to a season 10 episode in which Cartman tries to cryogenically freeze himself to avoid waiting for the Wii, many Switch owners thought the post was a tease of something more.
South Park Studio denied any possibility of The Fractured But Whole coming to Switch, while the game’s publishers at Ubisoft declined to comment. Might Ubisoft’s silence on this matter be meaningful? It’s hard to say, but this listing has prompted that discussion. This is, after all, the same publisher that openly said Beyond Good and Evil 2 wouldn’t be at E3 before resurfacing the game at E3 a few weeks later.
Retail listings are always hit or miss and we’re not super-optimistic about this one. That being said, the idea of having a mature game like South Park on a Nintendo platform is bound to be appealing to some Switch owners. When The Fractured But Whole came to other current-gen platforms this fall, we thought it was pretty good.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole is available now on PS4, Xbox One and PC.
What do you think of this recent rumor? Would you like to see The Fractured But Whole on Switch? Tell us in the comments section!
- tactical combat
- great environmental puzzles
- seamless adaptation of South Park
- engaging boss encounters
- Coon and Friends parody was already stale
- sometimes more referential than funny on its own
- several game mechanics feel extraneous
