Following the news from the other day regarding the planned Diablo 3 Switch port, Gamespot had the chance to sit down with Blizzard to discuss what other titles could potentially be coming over to the Nintendo system. Given the fact that the two companies haven’t worked together in nearly 15 years, there is a lot of excitement as to what other games could make the jump. Right now, it seems Overwatch might be the title with the highest chance to see a Switch port.
Gamespot posed the Overwatch question to Blizzard Entertainment senior producer Pete Stilwel to hear his thoughts on the matter. Here’s what he had to say:
“Anything is within the realm of possibility. Our team was given the task to work on this. If [Overwatch developer] Team 4 picks up that endeavour, that’s on them. As of right now Diablo is our only focus on Switch.”
When asked whether Overwatch could run well on the Switch, he noted “Yes, it is feasible.”
In discussing the issue of feasibility, the main issue to consider is transitioning from mouse/keyboard to a controller. Stilwel brought up StarCraft as an example. Back in June 2000, Blizzard released a port for the Nintendo 64. Now, if you’ve ever played any RTS game, it’s easy to see how difficult it might be playing it with a controller. Needless to say, Blizzard had to make numerous adjustments to the game in order to make it playable on the N64. Considering that Starcraft 2 is a significantly more complex game than its predecessor, Stilwel believes that in order to produce a port for the Switch, the development team would have to “change the core gameplay.”
When it comes to first-person shooters, however, the same problem doesn’t present itself in the same way. There have been countless great shooters that actually got started on consoles and play comfortably with a controller. For this reason Overwatch didn’t have many issues being adjusted for play on controllers. The fact that the game already exists on PS4 and Xbox One proves that it can work. At this point, it may just be a matter of time before it arrives onto the Switch.
