If Final Fantasy 15 director Hajime Tabata has his way, Switch owners will be able to play the latest Final Fantasy game on Nintendo’s hit console.
The question is whether or not the Switch version of Final Fantasy 15 will be a full port of the game or a reimagined experience tailor-made for the Switch’s features.
“We’re actually doing very specific technical investigations into what’s possible at the moment,” Tabata told Eurogamer. “Where we are at the moment – we’ve completed those tests and have worked out where the ground lies. We’re currently in the middle of the discussion and debate about what we should be doing, and how to realise that on the Switch.”
Tabata noted that the Final Fantasy 15 team can’t officially announce any Switch port of the game, but wants people to know that they are “having very open, frank discussions with Nintendo at the moment about what they think is the best thing to do. It’s all under investigation.”
So what’s the hold-up? Well, the most obvious culprit is the Switch’s technical limitations. Obviously, it will be difficult for the console to run a perfect port of the existing Final Fantasy 15 experience. Even though the Switch’s hardware is a little more capable than it typically receives credit for, Tabata admits that it’s going to be challenging to develop a modern game for the Switch.
“Honestly, when we did the technical test to see if we could use the same native engine we used on other console versions on the Switch, we tried to run it there, the results weren’t satisfactory,” said Tabata. “To give you an example how open those discussions are – we’re talking to Epic at the moment, about maybe what we could possibly do there, and if we did a Switch version maybe we’d be able to partner and do something there…You have to have all those options on the table – without that, it’d be impossible to make a decision about what we can do on that platform.”
So while you shouldn’t hold your breath for a Switch version of Final Fantasy 15, it certainly sounds like Tabata is determined to make it happen.