Wolfenstein II Developer Says Switch Port Will Have No Compromises

Been waiting. I'm ready.

I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays on Switch but my only worry is that there are parts of the game where enemies in the distance are quite small and they may be very hard to spot on Switch. I also think the drop to 30fps will affect gameplay in places.

Looking forward to being proven wrong though.

This should be a message to all 3rd party developers: give it some work and you can port most of the AAA-titles to switch.

That's not really true though is it. There might not be compromises to the actual gameplay but the question asked was "There won’t be any compromises in frame rate or anything like that" which there are seeing as it's running at 30fps instead of 60fps. As far as I'm aware it is anyway?

30fps is fine by me and I have faith there won't be any compromises to the gameplay since Doom plays superbly.

@EasyDaRon Agreed. I have worries about being able to spot distant enemies.

Been waiting for this for a while. Looking forward to supporting Bethesda, Panic Button Games and playing the sequel to Wolfenstein New Blood!

I want an announcement about if/when the dlc will come. If they don't I won't bother even if the port is good, like Doom.

Day one for me.

If you've already played Wolfenstein or Doom 60fps you'll likely notice the difference moving over to Switch, even if gameplay remains largely unchanged. If playing either on Switch is your first time with said games, you'll wonder why any fuss over 60fps.

@OorWullie You should read what was actually said instead of the headline, which unfortunately is getting more and more inaccurate in this site.

It was asked about compromises on framerate and the reply was that the gameplay wasn't affected by the "whatever framerate we needed to stick to" (which is probably a way to refer to 30fps without explicitly saying it).

I'm all about it.

Bethesda FPS are my favorite in the genre, but the motion just sets it off.

If NA would make preload live on the eshop I'd already have it downloaded.

They compromised on the screen resolutions.

I really hope more 3rd party companies approach Panic Button Games. I know this is just wishful thinking but I'd love to play the upcoming Assassin's Creed on the switch

His wording is kinda weird but I get what he's saying. I mean they're shrinking down the game to almost half the size, so there will be compromises. But if they can retain the core of the game it's going to shine. Doom was great, Rocket League was great, I expect this one to be great too.

Hmm, I kind of want to buy this, but I also don't want to pay full price for an old game that doesn't come with dlc.

Do we know if motion control aiming has been included?
Having got so used to motion control aiming I struggled with the dual sticks on the pro controller with Doom (until they released the motion control aiming patch). Hoping this will be standard inclusion for this title.

@NinjaWaddleDee The game is only 8 months old and you make it sound like it’s been out for years. Also, Panic Button has worked really hard on this port, so I really think this is worthy of being a full price release.

@Laxeybobby Yes, it's launching with motion aiming.

As soon as the previous one comes as well I"ll be all aboard. Want to play through them both on Switch and have the full story, but if that doesn't happen I guess I'll settle for a sale on the PC at some point.
Would rather have it portable though.

I'm kinda worried about Doom Eternal though, the fact that there was no platforms confirmed at the end of the E3 trailer has me thinking they wanted to avoid any negativity surrounding the reveal because a lack of a Switch version.
Not feeling optimistic about the Switch version's chances v.v

Id say they did compromise since once again instead of getting the cart size that would hold the game , we are forced into yet another mandatory download. Cheapskates!

Buying it for sure! Also hoping, we´ll see some Switch-exclusive 1st-person-shooters, which are using the consoles unique features.
For example, imagine a shooter where you hold weapons in each hand and you could aim and shoot indepentendly with them. That would be cool! 😁

Well the drop from 60 to 30fps is a gigantic compromise, as is the drop from 2160p to 720p.

If you want to play this just buy it for the PC people. That's how it was meant to be played. That said, buy the previous one instead, as it's far superior.

Well the game isn't complete on the cart is it? So there's a compromise right there, you won't be able to play it forever, which defeats the purpose of a physical release. That and all the technicalities of cutting on framerate and such, so I call BS rep talk.

I don't even care about some things being reduced as long as the game is the same and plays the same, but incomplete game? No thanks, not for me, I was buying this but my money will now go elsewhere, congrats Bethesda, you did this to yourself.

It'll be the first time I play Wolfenstein. I'm sure it'll be a gas👍

@RudyC3 @GameOtaku : And this is byfar the worst compromise of all.

Bethesda already pushed me far enough with the ridiculous 8GB download for DOOM.

In cases like these, I wish they would issue a limited edition with the full game on cartridge. This has been the first generation in gaming where I wouldn't mind the RRP for games to increase as opposed to post-release DLC, partial physical releases etc.

I understand that AAA releases are no longer as sustainable at the current pricing model, and games are cheaper than they have ever been, especially relative to and cost and manpower put into them, but the general public's reluctance to pay an extra $10 for something substantially better is baffling.

It is absolutely ridiculous to me that the market is unwilling to pay an extra $10 for a AAA release while forking over $50-$100 for limited editions that contain a bunch of stupid trinkets.

I originally intended to buy TWO copies of the game at full price (the other being the censored German/Austrian edition as a collector's item), but now I shall be buying neither. I may considering grabbing the PC version, or the Switch version later down the track when it drops to say, $20 or so, but I detest this practice with every fibre of my being and would be happy to go without.

Your fake marketing might fool Nintendo fanboys, but not me Panic Button.

@GraveLordXD : They didn't want to spend extra to use 32GB cartridges. This is especially aggravating as the game is retailing at less than the usual price for AAA games in Australia (AU$80 as opposed to $90 or $100).

@Silly_G " but the general public's reluctance to pay an extra $10 for something substantially better is baffling.

It is absolutely ridiculous to me that the market is unwilling to pay an extra $10 for a AAA release while forking over $50-$100 for limited editions that contain a bunch of stupid trinkets."

How very pro-corporation of you.

@EasyDaRon

yeah it's gonna be lower quality. as the ps4 version is to the pc.

if you want 100% you swallow the cost and get a pc.

if you want 75% ish then go for a ps4pro/xb1x.

if you want 50% ish then stick to the original twins

if you want to play on a portable then play on the switch.

Until dynamic resolution hits 600p - and you at 25fps like Doom. People need to let it go. You will have to compromise if you want to play Wolfenstein on Switch.

I play both Doom and Wolfenstein on PC because I want it as perfect as possible. But regardless, play the game - Wolfenstein 2 is awesome. A few frame drops or blurry texture will make no difference. It is a great ride, well worth the price.

I love Panic Button and all, but c'mon "no compromises" is overstating things quite a bit. Happy to hear we're getting the full game though.

@Menchi187 : I would rather pay an extra $10 and receive a complete game without post-release DLC and all of the other tactics that corporations use to subsidise the costs of modern game development. The public would actually be saving money if not for the fact that these practices have now become the norm.

Now explain to me how my reasoning is "pro-corporation".

@Silly_G It's something called choice. Increasing the price of a game and getting nothing extra for it over the same product at the original price is also not consumer friendly.

All because you want Nintendo's bad physical media policy to not effect you.

The sheer notion of basically berating consumers for not wanting to pay more is the top tier of pro-corporation, anti-consumer practices.

Sounds like you picture the wrong platform to support.

Or the perfect one for your pro-corporate defense.

@sword_9mm Na, vanilla is not %50 of PC. You do PC if you want the higher resolution. If you on a 1080p TV you cant tell all that difference on PS4 - it is a bit softer and gets a dip here and there - but assets look almost identical. I do not have an X1 so not sure on that.

You cant even get a GTX1060 for the price of a PS4 - so you get a great bang for the buck regardless - When it comes to Wolfenstein2. You should still get the GTX over a PS4/X1 any day 😉 it is Just ID Tech6 scales really well.

People need to just buy this game anywhere they can

@Agramonte

you do you.

i find the ps4 to be about medium quality, 1080, 30fps. that's NOT high end in the least bit.

ps4pro probably would do what; medium 1080 at 60fps.

xbx would be most likely shoe-horning somewhat 4k at 30ish fps.

the argument was you have to take a lower quality product the farther down the line you go and it's the truth. pc -> xbx/ps4proish -> ps4/xb1 -> switch.

that's the quality scale and it's pretty indisputable. i for one would only play this game on PC (mouse/kb is also a requirement for good first person control).

i'm perfectly fine if devs want to port over stuff to the switch with whatever caveats they have to use. i won't buy most of that stuff but more power to you. portability is nice for some stuff and i do have FE/skyrim/la noir which were all downgraded for the switch.

cartridges cost and that is why games are more expensive than discs. discs may be cheaper, but discs cannot store anything, that is why they need a big harddrive to store all the information.

Ryan usually writes headlines that have nothing to do with what developers really say. The developer is talking about frame rate and physics. There will be lots of shortcomings, just look at the Doom port and Wolfenstein is more demanding technically.

@sword_9mm True - in general about half a PC... I am just talking about Wolfenstein 2. On PS4 it runs 55/60fps at 1080p... I think DT did the comparison also. But it is a bit softer - they always put that blur muck on consoles.

I still played it on PC (just like DOOM) - in my mind they PC games. I'll play something else on the go - but to each their own. I hope it does well.

@Silly_G

that's N's short sighted greed.

they could basically give away the carts; but that wouldn't be the Nintendo way. squeeze that lemon is their motto.

it WILL eventually kill them; just taking longer than most thought. if the switch drops off a cliff like the wii then i'd wager we'll be playing mario on at least a sony system (hopefully a PC as well).

@Silly_G "I understand that AAA releases are no longer as sustainable at the current pricing model, and games are cheaper than they have ever been, especially relative to and cost and manpower put into them, but the general public's reluctance to pay an extra $10 for something substantially better is baffling."

The trouble is real income is steadily going DOWN with inflation. While the companies can argue all they want that the costs to produce games has gone up, that was their own decision making and goal setting that led to that, and they can argue the cost of games has gone down with inflation (they have, but games are only $60 for 2 weeks and they're $20-30 by the end of the year on most platforms). They don't need to charge $100 for a game if they just didn't liquidate games when they're 3 months old. Not that I'm complaining about bargains.

Ultimately, it's a luxury entertainment good for which they drove their own costs up and consumers can afford it less (yes for the upper stratus of society income has never been so good, but for everyone else real income has been dropping since the 70's)...they boxed themselves into a corner. Add in a time where mobile games are free, even games like Fortnite are partly free, and Netflix is all you can watch video rentals for $10.....$60 a game is exceedingly overpriced for the market, let alone increasing the price. Being blind to that is a self inflicted wound on their part as they chased technology, costs be darned. People knock Nintendo but their dev costs are lower, and their steady pricing higher. Which is why they're the richest company in their country wile other game developers in Japan collapse left and right.

@sword_9mm You do realize Nintendo has more monetary value than Sony Corp (and more than Toyota, Fujitsu, Panasonic, etc.), right? I'd wait for Kratos on a Nintendo console before Mario on a Playstation. However I think either is pretty unlikely.

Nintendo is far more asset light so it's not a 1:1 comparison, Sony, Toyota, etc. holds tons of land and manufacturing facilities, while Nintendo's value is based mostly on IP, but at present, Nintendo's still worth more. Those companies have a lot of resources tied up in expenditures while Nintendo can just bank it all for a rainy day. But that's good because Nintendo also lacks diversity to fall back on: The gaming must succeed.

@NEStalgia

well iirc at one point N said they'd just go out of business before becoming a 3rd party so there's that.

i just want to see better management at the helm on both sides of the pacific. they're still a decade behind the other companies and I don't get why their so spooked to join the 2018's. they wish it were 1994 perpetually.

silly company imo. though apple eventually learned so we'll see how N does. heck; it wouldn't surprise me to see Nadella turn xbox into a service minus the appliance before N makes a move to chapter 11/3rd party.

I can’t wait for this game. I hope Youngblood will come to Switch as well.

@sword_9mm That was Iwata, but yeah, I think that's the company mentality. It's also a very Japanese mentality. It's dishonorable to fight when the situation is futile, and it's more honorable to accept defeat by death than by capture or servitude. The old samurai code translates to modern business well there. heck the PS1 exists because Kutaragi convinced the CEO that Yamauchi had dishonored him. Once it became a matter of honor all funding needed was given to Kutaragi and the PSX was born.

I don't think they're "behind" the other companies in much of anything. The company makes more money than Sony and more than the XBox division of Microsoft (obviously they can't compete with Windows and Word.) Usually that's called success. They're not trying to be the same as a Playstation or XBox. They have a different product that sells great, is approaching for now outselling XBox worldwide (not in the US, but total world numbers). Technically the Switch is the most "advanced" of the 3 consoles. PS4 is an obsolete low end PC with out of date console trappings. XBox1X is the most powerful console by far, but it's basically a really well designed, power efficient, gaming PC (that costs 75% more than a Switch), but mobile tech is where the real tech advancement has been coming from. In hardware terms, it's the Switch that's really pushing the envelope. Raw power is great, but good power sipping from a battery is a serious challenge for hardware engineers. But ultimately it's a different product. I have a PS4 Pro, X1X, Switch. I can't decide which I like most. I can't decide which I like least. Each has strengths and weaknesses. If I had to pick a least favorite now it would be PS4....but those exclusives!

Their marketing, though.....now THAT is backward!

@NEStalgia

save game backups, online services, game sharing are just 3 of the things they're way behind on.

and if you're talking 'mobile' being cutting edge; i would say yes if they licensed apple's arm procs but they went with an old Nvidia chip. maybe apple doesn't license these things but that would've been a really cool partnership. throw a few bones to ios devices and get the best arm chips. hell; let apple run the online portion as well since N has no clue what to do with those 'internets'.

@sword_9mm Save game backups isn't so much "behind" as much as "really weird choice". Wii, DS, 3DS, WiiU all allowed save game backups to an external storage device. Now they're implementing cloud saves the same way Sony does (pay to have cloud saves), but no local backups while Sony does. I imagine it has to do with the rampant "save scumming" in Splatoon (which people justified as "I'm just using the built in save restore feature Nintendo provided, so it's not cheating, it's just using the features Nintendo provided me!!" but it's still a weird reaction to it. Their cloud saves feature is standard. Their local saves feature is...it's not "behind" so much as "intentionally restricting a feature they provided for 7+ years...." They were ahead...and then decided to not be?

I still don't get everyone's criticism of "online services". I have an X1X. I have a PS4 Pro. I have a Switch. I subscribe to XBLG, PSN+, and will be subscribing to NO. All 3 services work well enough to me. Invites to games are certainly not as simple on Switch, but I've never had problems with Discord in tow, which, lets face it, that's what everyone uses anyway on most platforms. And Fortnite proved chat doesn't need to be difficult, it's a per-game thing. So I still don't understand the persistent arguments that Nintendo's online is terrible (or that Sony's is so much worse than MS's)

I'll give you game sharing....though we don't know with digital how that works with NO..."details to come"....I'm interested in finding out as well. Physical is equal across the board, but yeah digital Nintendo would benefit from that and I doubt they'll do it.

OTOH: The more I've gone into digital the more I feel Sony is "behind" too....MS just does it all so much cleaner. Sony won't let me copy a game to a backup drive....or to another local machine....each game is a special file that can only be moved from one location to another, never copied. And the disc copy doesn't work with a digital key once installed.....if the bars can move for "behind" I give Nintendo a C-, Sony a C+, and Microsoft an A.

Despite the Apple Enhanced marketing, there's nothing remarkably special about Apple's chips. They're just custom licensed builds from partner vendors. Apple's not a semiconductor engineering firm. They do electronics design in house, but not the semiconductors. Their current top of the line is generally in step with what Qualcomm and Samsung put out....and it's also part of a $1000 build. Tegra X1 actually draws more power though with a bigger TDP. I haven't seen benchmarks for the latest Apple, Snapdragon, and Exynos chips but the Tegra X1 was beating the last round of them and is still nVidia's top mobile chip (other than the X2 which still costs a fortune and is industrial specialized and doesn't have production yields to suit Switch.) But, mobile is advancing so incredibly fast, that's why anything mobile is so advanced but also goes obsolete so fast. At the time of launch it was beyond state of the art. But mobile will surpass within a few years always, while PC has stagnated, and a PS4 doesn't look TOO anemic 4.5 years later.

Cant wait to get this on Switch!!!

I want it! I have had this pre-ordered for months!

It's not a series that interests me personally, but I am following the news to know how big 3rd party titles like this run on Switch.

@NEStalgia

I hate it when people are like oh X1 old tech.......it was the most viable chipset N could use at the time. People overlook the ‘stability’ gained by having a well tested SOC. Switch is an engineering marvel. The balance between price, size, power, battery, and thermal design is why its a hit.

Its in a unque position in that only Apple is well positioned to build a compeditor and even if they did their market won’t support full priced games.

@QuickSilver88 Not only the nature of a well tested SoC, but they needed it over 2 years ago....it's been on the market for a year, and needed to be final for development a year to two years prior. It was literally the most bleeding edge mobile tech around when they inked the deal. Sure, 2 years later it seems more aged in the fast moving mobile tech world, but such is mobile tech, where a new flagship is released every 120 days. X1 is holding up amazingly well. Nothing has still really bested it. I'd be curious about the latest Qualcomm offerings in comparison since they have a lower TDP, but typically the pure mobile hardware isn't actually as powerful as Tegra....it may have an edge in poly count but falls quite behind in shaders, and they cost fortunes. That $300 price point was critical, including controllers. Apple ain't selling an iPhone 10 for $300, and it doesn't even have mechanical controllers. (And the Joycons sticks and bumpers are a LOT more durable than the $150 XBox Elite..... )

It truly is a marvel. The SoC not only was "the future available today" when they signed the contract, but it still holds up well (a feat in the mobile space!) And all the things you said, whole thermal design, the totally solid feeling of the joycons when docked as though it's a contiguous unit, the price, reasonable battery use, it's quite amazing.

You're right about its unique position. Microsoft has said in the past they won't touch handheld because Nintendo is too strong there, Sony has failed in the past every attempt...little chance they try again (though they're most likely), Samsung, LG, etc have no useful experience with full price games, and Apple....their one console experiment failed, they own the mobile app revenues already, and, yeah, even Mario for $10 failed horribly....Mario for $60 would be a nightmare. And the inevitable Chinese clones will be sloppy, rickety messes (with no games.)

USB-C really put it over the edge....get a big battery pack and play endlessly. EA/Ubi seems to think streaming is the future of mobile gaming.....these people apparently never leave L.A/Paris. "Connection unstable" in Splatoon as a method of gaming isn't fun

Thank you PB for all of your great work. I have Wolf 2 on pre order. I cant wait to play it.

This game was actually the only game I bothered to wait to play (the fact that there was only one person in front of me waiting certainly helped) at E3 yesterday, and it simply blew me away. They crammed amazing fidelity and responsiveness into the tiny (surprising) powerhouse that is the Nintendo Switch. I think Youngblood will release as well, though I'd also like them to port the original (at a discount!).