NetherRealm Studios seems very interested in bringing its fighting franchises, such as the recent Injustice 2 installment, over to the Nintendo Switch in the near future.
Speaking with GameSpot in a recent interview, creative director Ed Boon stated that it is completely possible to do so. However, porting games like Injustice 2 will ultimately mean that there might be shortcomings in visual fidelity to account for the lighter hardware.
“Yeah, I think at the end of the day you can make almost any game… there are inevitable compromises, but you know, you can make some version of Injustice on the Atari 2600,” Boon stated. “It’s not going to be great, but I bet you can make something.”
He also noted that there could be technical challenges but they can be met by outsourcing the project to another studio. The Nintendo Switch, after all, does feature a different hardware architecture. Hence, an external team that is more familiar with the console would prove more efficient.
“From the game player’s perspective, would it be fun to play Injustice on [Switch]? I do think it would,” Boon added. “You could have tournaments, everyone comes over with their own system and you can have whole structured tournaments and parallel gameplay and all that.”
There are already a number of two-dimensional fighting games on the Nintendo Switch but majority of them are remastered or reworked classic installments. This includes the likes of Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers from Capcom and The King of Fighters ’98 from SNK. The question is whether third-party studios are interested in bringing over their recent releases to the hybrid console. NetherRealm Studios certainly seems like a contender to be the first in that regard.
Injustice 2 released in May for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It is also available on mobile devices. The developer even held a poll earlier this year to ask the community whether they would love a portable version on the PlayStation Vita or Nintendo Switch. The latter took the highest votes.
