Sonic Frontiers Producer Promises It Will 'Run Well' On Nintendo Switch
Sonic Frontiers is looking ambitious, and even though we'd encourage ambition in any other franchise, the blue blur hasn't quite nailed it yet. 3D Sonic titles haven't exactly scored well with critics or fans, with 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog standing in infamy as one of the worst games ever made, and it hasn't exactly gotten much better since.
The series has succeeded in capitalising on nostalgia for the 2D days, but with every new 3D title, it feels like SEGA strays further from the track. Judging from some jittery gameplay videos, it looks as though the new open-world Sonic Frontiers could follow in their footsteps. But now, the game's team has reassured fans that it will actually work. Not such a good sign, to be honest.
Can You Play Sonic Frontiers On Nintendo Switch?
Click to enlargeGamers have always been sceptical when it's revealed that large-ish titles are coming to the Nintendo Switch, as the console's limited firepower under the hood doesn't exactly lend itself to games that require a lot of focus. Sonic Frontiers appears to be one of these games, with plenty to render on the fly,
Thankfully, the game's producer has come forward to assure fans that the game will actually perform well on the console. You'd hope so, really. In a recent press event and in response to GameReactor, Takashi Iizuka has assured fans that the game will be fine on Nintendo's console.
"Our artists are making tons of content at very high levels, and if you got this great and amazing high-spec PC, that's great. But we also want to make sure, that people who are playing on the Nintendo Switch have the same experience. So, we are not necessarily using the same high-end assets, but the Hedgehog Engine is able to reduce it to a size where it's going to look very comparable on a Nintendo Switch, as it is to a high-end PC," says Iizuka.
Iizuka Believes In The Hedgehog Engine
In the same interview, the producer made it clear that he has full faith in the engine that has kept the 3D games in the franchise moving. "It is extremely challenging to develop on this incredibly wide spectrum of hardware. But the good thing is we are using the Hedgehog Engine," he says. "The Hedgehog Engine is an internally developed engine we have been using since Sonic Generations, and we have been updating it since 2010 when the game was in development, to really make sure that multiplatform development is as easy as it can be.
"We have been working on polishing all of those multiplatform abilities and capabilities of the engine. And as we saw with Sonic Forces, yes, we were able to deliver a game across not only the very low-end spec machines but also the high-end spec machines." Sonic Frontiers could be brilliant, but it could equally be a total catastrophe. At least it has Iijuka out at the front of the game - because if anyone should believe in it, it should be those behind it.
