The Nintendo Switch just added a big piece to the indie puzzle. Today, Unreal announced that game developers will be able to release their games on the Nintendo Switch. The featured announcement said that the Nintendo Switch will have “fully-featured native support for the popular platform in Unreal Engine 4.16.” Unreal and Nintendo started out, with early support for Unreal 4.15 build back in February, but now they’ve officially partnered up.
Powerful Development For Nintendo Switch
This powerful engine has been used to develop huge AAA titles including: Gears of War 4, Street Fighter V, Tekken 7, and the upcoming Kingdom Hearts III. But it’s also made indie titles like Dead by Daylight, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, and about 1,500 different titles on IndieDB. A common criticism for Nintendo has been sacrificing performance for, innovation. While the PS4 and XBONE have boasted about having the best processors and graphics chips (for a console), Nintendo has preferred to focus on pushing the boundaries of how we look at gaming.
Whether it was the motion controls of the Wii, the second screen for the Wii U, or the Switch’s grab and go functionality. Nintendo really tries to think differently. But that different thinking has required developers to work with less, and in harsher conditions. Developers stated that they were floored by how easy it was to develop for the Switch.
The Wii and WiiU on the other hand, were hard to develop for, for third party developers. And Nintendo was also difficult to work with apparently. This was a major factor into the failure of the WiiU and it’s rather short lifespan. But with this new engine, and it’s famous ease of development, Nintendo is hoping to turn the corner. Because at the end of the day, more games will mean more money for Nintendo and for developers.
Getting Started with Switch
The steps for getting started with Unreal and Nintendo are very straightforward. First, developers will need to go to Nintendo’s Developer website and become an approved developer. Then they need to fill out Unreal’s Console Development Request UE4 form. Once developers are approved for it will be sent an electronic NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). After that, all they have to do is wait for source access, and compile the code for the Nintendo Switch platform.
Looking Forward
This is all a far cry from Wii U’s issues with third party development. Nintendo has learned from it’s mistakes in the past. No matter how many units the latest Mario Kart, and Legend of Zelda game move, the Switch will need third party support. Adding an engine that is as open and easy to develop is a major step up. More games are made every day, and it’s not AAA titles leading the pack. It’s the small developers struggling to hone their craft. The disgruntled former employees, tired of the corporate grind. Young, fresh faces right out of college ready to show the world what they can do.
Some of the best games I ever played came from indie developers, and the Switch can now look for that diamond in the rough. I’m very excited about this announcement, not just for Unreal, but what it means for indie developers everywhere. And you should be too.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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