For months it was the buzz of the Internet: ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ didn’t run well on Nintendo Switch, for obvious reasons: the graphics quality was worse, the loading times went up to 50 seconds, and the overall gaming experience couldn’t have been the same in any way. However, along with that general mockery came another assertion: it could be much worse. And that’s the key point.
Preparing engines
Shiver Entertainment was in charge of porting not only the ‘Harry Potter’ game to Switch, but also Mortal Kombat 1 and ‘Mortal Kombat 11’, with decent results once again considering the capabilities of the console today. But beyond how well or poorly they do ports of others, why has Nintendo decided to make them an internal studio from now on?
Logic indicates that this is a strategic step towards, of course, Switch 2. Basically, everything that those games left to be desired was not Shiver’s fault, but Nintendo’s own and what it can offer right now. Basically, the fact that ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ is playable is already impressive for the big N. And they need launch games. Now.
But does it make sense to bother acquiring a studio that also does ports for third parties? According to reports, Nintendo wants to reduce the gap between current consoles and their own, and that includes AAA games being released late or with worse features. In a gaming world that, except for a couple of exclusives, will increasingly focus on cross-platform, the Japanese company needs to compete by any means necessary.
Does Nintendo want to break, even a little, its bubble and fully immerse itself in the current gaming landscape? It seems so. For now, the countdown for Switch 2 continues to sound, and rarely has a console brought so much hype with it.