With so many big triple-A games making their way to the Nintendo Switch, a bunch of gamers have been asking if DICE and Electronic Arts would consider porting over the upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront 2 to Nintendo's hybrid home console. So could Star Wars: Battlefront 2 make it to the Nintendo Switch?
According to Gamespot, the game could come to the Nintendo Switch but there are no plans right now. Motive Studios -- one of the many studios currently working on Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (specifically the single-player campaign) -- producer David Robillard explained to Gamespot that the game isn't scheduled to arrive on the Switch right now.
This is something we'll explore if we see opportunities there, but it is not something that's on the books right now
Gamespot interpreted that comment to mean that Electronic Arts and its subsidiaries are definitely keeping eyes on the Nintendo Switch's install base. Right now we're not sure where the Switch is, but between March and June Nintendo managed to move nearly 5 million SKUs. From June to October hopefully we'll get some sort of indicator as to where the Switch is. If it gets close to 10 million then it might be hard for Electronic Arts to continue to ignore the system when it comes to the big AAA outings.
To EA's credit, the publisher has been slowly rolling out certain games to Nintendo's Switch such as this year's outing of FIFA 18. However, there was a pretty big difference between the Switch version and the other platform versions: The Switch wasn't running the Frostbite 3 game engine.
EA and DICE haven't exactly said if the Frostbite just can't run on the Switch or if it will require a complete overhaul to run right proper on Nintendo's system. Why is this significant in the discussion about Star Wars: Battlefront 2 being ported to the Switch? Because it was built from the ground up on DICE's Frostbite 3 technology.
If the engine hasn't been or won't be ported for use with the Switch, then it would mean DICE, Criterion Games, and Motive Studios would have to then work on completely overhauling Star Wars: Battlefront 2 to operate on the Switch. There's also no telling how well the game would operate and function on another engine. That's not to mention all the in-engine assets and fine-tuning that would be required to rework engine-exclusive features, such as lighting, runtime libraries, rendering pipelines, and call functions having to be completely overhauled.
Some gamers have said that this doesn't seem like a likely bet, especially considering that even if the game did manage to run decently in the TV mode there's a pretty huge gap between the TV mode and the portable mode, and that's usually where a lot of games run into problems.
Others seem to think that EA is still waiting for the install base for the Switch to get bigger before committing to moving over a game like Battlefront 2. However, some feel as if by the time that EA gives Nintendo's system some attention that the window of opportunity may pass and gamers may find their time occupied with other AAA games such as Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, DOOM, or one of the many other games on the horizon for the Switch, either via port or exclusive to the system.
