When Spanish developer MercurySteam asked me whether I wanted to visit the studio to check out some large changes to its third-person-shooter/brawler Raiders of the Broken Planet, I guessed that it was becoming free to play, and that a Nintendo Switch port was incoming. Nowadays, those are pretty obvious guesses.
While I nailed the first prediction, which will be accompanied by the relaunch as Spacelords, I was wrong on the second. Spacelords will still be only on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Game Director Enric Álvarez explained why.
“We think Spacelords would especially fit into the Switch’s catalog. I think Switch players would go crazy with a game like this. Yet, you know what? We’re an independent, small developer. Spacelords is self-financed, and when we asked ourselves like a year ago if we would add the Switch to the platform roster, we thought “oh, that would be a great idea, but maybe it’s too much for us.”
Imagine Spacelords’ development: four campaigns, a storyline with cutscenes, events, big bosses, etcetera, and different platforms to be working with. We simply couldn’t put a new platform on top of the others.”
So yes, this game on Switch would be very interesting, but simply put we didn’t have the capacity to include it.”
That being said, asked whether a Switch port is something that could be considered for the future, Álvarez responded simply “Why not?” Yet, he also explained that it would be difficult for MercurySteam to give the task of porting the game to another developer, as they want to be hands-on with their project, and Spacelords is an “extremely complex piece of software.” It would be “really challenging for any other studio to do that.”
So there you have it. While Spacelords won’t be on Nintendo Switch, for now, a port some time in the future is not out of the question.
If you want to learn more about Raiders of the Broken Planet‘s relaunch as Spacelords and see the new trailer, you can check out our dedicated article. You can also learn why it won’t include any loot boxes.
The update that will turn the game into Spacelords will be available on August 23rd for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.