Could it happen?

Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata caused quite a stir a short time ago when he hinted that the game could be coming to the Nintendo Switch. 

With the announcment of Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition soon afterwards, many assumed that version would be released on Nintendo's system, but in a chat with Eurogamer Tabata reveals that it's still his intention to bring the full experience to Switch:

We're actually doing very specific technical investigations into what's possible at the moment. Where we are at the moment - we've completed those tests and have worked out where the ground lies. We're currently in the middle of the discussion and debate about what we should be doing, and how to realise that on the Switch.

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The other thing - you see the mobile version, the PC version, one thing we value is to optimise the way the game plays and the experience for the individual hardware it's on rather than a one-size fits all approach. We can't currently announce anything - we haven't come to a full decision on the best way to do it yet. We're having very open, frank discussions with Nintendo at the moment about what they think is the best thing to do. It's all under investigation.

Tabata - who also revealed that he still doesn't have a Switch of his own but is hopeful that Santa will bring him one at Christmas - also explained that Square Enix is talking to Epic about possibly using its Unreal Engine to power a port:

Honestly, when we did the technical test to see if we could use the same native engine we used on other console versions on the Switch, we tried to run it there, the results weren't satisfactory. It wasn't what you'd want from a final game. It doesn't mean that's the end of that - we're looking at the options, like the customisation of the engine. To give you an example how open those discussions are - we're talking to Epic at the moment, about maybe what we could possibly do there, and if we did a Switch version maybe we'd be able to partner and do something there. Their Unreal environment is just amazing, and will be very useful. You have to have all those options on the table - without that it'd be impossible to make a decision about what we can do on that platform.

Given that Doom and Wolfenstein 2 have both been confirmed for Switch recently, it gives us hope that somehow Square Enix can find a way of cramming the full Final Fantasy XV console experience into Nintendo's hybrid system. 

Are you as optimistic, or do you think it's an impossible task? Let us know with a comment.

[source eurogamer.net]