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Many sports fans were likely disappointed by Wii U; while the system saw some support early on, its slow lifetime sales made many developers question the value of bringing their games to the system, and the sports genre suffered as a result. So far, Switch has been a different story as it has been selling faster than Nintendo can bring the systems to market. Thanks to this interest, FIFA will be making its way back to Nintendo for the first time since 2013.
Given the Switch’s unique hardware and feature set, it should come as little surprise that FIFA 18 on Switch won’t be a carbon copy of the version releasing on other systems according to series producer Andrei Lazarescu. One way in which the developers are taking advantage of the system is with an optional control scheme that only requires a single Joy-Con. While Lazarescu admits this isn’t the best way to play the game due to there being fewer buttons, it will allow for a quick and easy way to set up one-on-one matches.
One downside to the Switch version is that it lacks the story driven campaign mode known as The Journey. The reason for this exclusion is that this mode is rooted too deeply in EA’s proprietary Frostbite engine which powers other versions of the game, but not the one for Switch.
More importantly, EA must have confidence in how FIFA 18 will perform because Lazarescu stated, “I think we are going to see more FIFA on Switch in the future.”
Hopefully any such future iterations will see more in the way of feature parity with other versions of the game while still taking advantage of Switch’s unique feature set; otherwise, gamers might not respond so enthusiastically if they start to feel like they are getting an inferior version. FIFA 18 for Switch releases on September 29 in all major markets.
Source: Nintendo Everything
