With all of the porting that Nintendo is doing for Wii U titles, there are a handful that I see fans asking for time and time again. One of the most wanted is Xenoblade Chronicles X, a game that debuted on Wii U after a lengthy and long delayed development cycle.
The team at Monolift Soft is hard at work on a sequel for Switch called Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but founder Tetsuya Takahashi recently found the time to sit down with TIME magazine for an interview about his upcoming Switch game.
TIME: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 seems to have come together must quicker than Xenoblade Chronicles X. What’s it like working with the Switch compared to the Wii U?
The ease or speed of developing Xenoblade Chronicles 2 stems a lot from our having already created this architecture with Xenoblade Chronicles X. The game portion of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is kind of overlaid on top of that fundamental architecture. I think that made the biggest contribution to why development went so fast. And in terms of Switch versus Wii U, another point is that we’ve only had to deal with one screen, so that also has made development a little bit easier.
Takahashi also mentions that because of the problems they had in developing Xenoblade Chronicles X for the Wii U, they went back to the drawing board to understand how they could get a massive RPG out in early phases of the Switch’s life cycle. It’s interesting to see how the development of Xenoblade Chronicles X has impacted that of the upcoming game from a developers perspective.
Takahashi says he’d love to see Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Switch, but there’s a lot going on that makes it impossible to focus on right now.
TIME: I thought Xenoblade Chronicles X was a wonderful game, and also wonderfully different from Xenoblade Chronicles. But it feels like Mario Kart 8, in that it was constrained by the Wii U’s limited audience. Any chance we might see it come to the Switch?
Thank you for that feedback. I think we’re currently completely focused on creating Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and even after I go back to Japan, I have a mountain of tasks that I need to overcome. But I would love to think about it, after the development for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is completed.
So it sounds like those of you hoping this game gets released on Switch might have a slim chance, but only after the sequel is finished. So much for a dual release like Bayonetta/Bayonetta 2.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 – $59.99
