It was revealed not too long ago that RiME is finally coming to the Nintendo Switch this November. The title launched on other platforms back in May and now RiME Producer Cody Bradley has explained why we’ve had to wait until much later in the year for the Switch version. In a recent blog post over at the official RiME website, Bradley touched on optimising RiME for Switch, implementing an achievement system and more. Below are some snippets from the post but head over here if you want to read it all.
First, some history. The decision to go multi-platform was made a few months before it was announced last year. At that time, work was only underway on the PC and Xbox versions of the game. The Switch SKU had not yet entered active development.
Work began in earnest on the Switch SKU in August of 2016. Given that this was a new console, we made a bunch of educated guesses as to the work that would be involved porting it over to the new hardware. Some of these predictions turned out to be right, and some of them turned out to be wrong. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that they were wrong until work started to “wrap up” earlier this year.
Right now, the teams at Tantalus and Tequila Works are busy optimizing shaders, fixing bugs, and getting the game ready for our submission to first party review. It takes about two months when all is said and done to actually get the game on store shelves after that point. If all goes well, this will be the last time you hear from us on this subject.
One final note, we’re doing everything in our power to preserve the gameplay experience from other platforms. This means that all of the optimizations we’re chasing do not involve re-working levels. We feel that this is the only viable approach for our players. RiME is a special game, and everyone should have the same experience regardless of their platform of choice. In fact, in order to ensure that the same level of narrative parity is in the game, we have built an achievement system into the game, so that the significance of certain key moments is not lost.
well , to much talk, lets see when the game release if the same is gonna be optimized
They aren’t ‘guilty’. But the fact is that many of those interested in the game already bought it for other platforms, so a delayed port isn’t going to sell big in any case. Still the Nintendo Switch is also portable so the game will end in some people hands. For me it was a no go from the start (I’ve never been interested in the game).
I’m glad I haven’t bought this yet. The Switch version might turn out to be the best version.
I’ve been waiting patiently for this game on switch and hope they can iron everything out and release it without any further delays
Is it just me, or does that RiME box art look like a middle finger?