Cities: Skylines Is Out Now On The Nintendo Switch

After the Civ VI anouncement, I was hoping Paradox would announce some games for the Switch, but Cities was a total surprise for me.

I read reports that the FPS drops to 20 when the city gets big enough.

I'm still excited for this though. I wanted sim games on Switch and in the span of a few weeks we got Cities and Prison Architect. Good stuff!

Downloading this straight away today. This is Sim-city done right, and better than ever! This is a genre of game I have been wanting on Switch for a while now and was very pleasantly shocked when I saw the announcement!

Between this and Civilization 6 dropping on Switch, I have very little reason to use my PC anymore aside from video streaming.

@JHDK I question how people could know that when the game has been out for less than 4 hours. I played it on PC and unless you really know what you are doing, getting a big city in just a couple hours is really hard.

But even still, I have framedrops on PC too so I can live with it. So long as it's playable.

@Heavyarms55 It was from a reporter who played it. Seems like a legit source to me.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-09-12-cities-skylines-for-switch-has-some-disappointing-performance-issues

@heavyarms55 I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on how the game plays without mouse/keyboard. I loved this on PC.

Sim City reborn

@Dijita I am curious at well. Unfortunately I am at work now, so I can't try it out till later.

@JHDK Ah Eurogamer? That's a pretty decent source. They probably got a review copy.

@Heavyarms55 You could see it running at a low frame rate from the footage they showed.

@Heavyarms55 What kind of games do you use your PC for? I'd be playing third party games that don't make their way to the Switch.

@JHDK Just read your link, personally, I don't think I will have too much issue. The FPS issues he's talking about come from zooming way in, in the late game, which is something I know some people love doing, but something I rarely do while playing on the PC version.

@HollowGrapeJ My most played games on PC are Civilization and similar games, Cities Skylines, and Hearthstone. There are certainly many other great games on PC and I have a bunch of stuff on Steam, but with so many great games coming out on Switch, being chained to PC is becoming less and less appealing to me.

Quite a surprise.
Great game, I have it on PS4 already. The controls on console are surprisingly decent.
Good game for anyone looking to fill the SimCity void, though I find it lacks the difficulty those games had (though I think the DLC packs may remedy this, as one adds natural disasters). Once you get your population over a certain number, I think it's near impossible to get a Game Over.

I also suggest Surviving Mars to anyone into these sorts of games, if it also comes to Switch eventually. It's a bit more challenging.

Unfortunately the Switch is powerful enough to run some of these games without compromise. This and Civ 6 looked rough in the Direct.

I meant is not

@Heavyarms55 Fair enough. Like I said, I'm excited for this game and will probably buy it tonight. This article just caught my eye when I Googled "Cities Switch".

The poor switch, this game is going to be so taxing on the the poor thing.

Woah, this looks pretty cool.

Physical release to save space???

I've been playing this game a lot as it is on gamepass for Xbox, and it is great, but I don't know how well the switch will be able to run it, even though I would love to take this game with me. I did just buy DLC for it, though...

Have this on PC. Truly an amazing game. The only negative for me is I felt it lacked the challenge that my other fave City builder game SimCity 4 had. Nonetheless it is good enough for me to double dip.

I'll keep an eye on this, I already have it on Steam. If it runs better on the Switch compared to my computer, then sure.

It's another crappy Unity game that's why it's slow. Even on PC it needs fast processors. Why can't EA port Simcity to Switch?

Even though this game is really very good, and follows the path of Sim City, I really like to see a good Sim City, it would be nice to see that Sim City with the touch of the SNES Classic Sim City (in which Nintendo was involved in its development), I'd like to see Dr. Wright again and listen again its wonderful soundtrack!!

I'm so close to double dipping this one. I had so much fun with it and to be able to check on my cities everywhere... Very tempting

Bought it!
Great news! Keep publishing the good strategy games for the Switch!

For me, the Nintendo DS era was the console Golden Age - because of the many strategy games on it that were never available in handheld format before.
But now we have both modes!

Heroes of Might & Magic, you're up next!
(Please please please, Ubisoft!)

Eventual physical release? I hope so. I love games like this.

Well this came out of nowhere. Couldn't be happier to be honest, I am a total Sim City fan and this game is the perfect modern version of that concept.

Wow, another top tier game! This is the best modern "SimCity" there ever was. It includes both DLC and it's 39,99 instead of 59,99? If it was on retail right now, I would go and buy it. But it seems it's only available on the eShop at the moment.

I wonder about the games performance, didn't look that nice in the direct. makes me a bit worried about my beloved civ 6.

Very interesting.
Pretty crazy they've got such an advanced simulation game up running on a somewhat old, downclocked arm cpu. Gonna try it out later, but would be even more interested in a Switch-version of Hearts of Iron. With online mode.

@JHDK The frame rate in the PS4 version is pretty bad but it plays great to me. Because it's not an action game, more just one where you're scrolling around and looking at stuff, frame rate doesn't make much of a difference.

Will have to see more gameplay of course but I'm not worried. This will be updated for a while too if the other console versions are anything to go by

@SonOfVon Cities Skylines is much more complex than Civ processing wise and has thousands of pedestrians walking around all with actual destinations and jobs etc. Civ is a turn based game with much less to keep track of so should be nothing to worry about.

I quite fancy this one, although I am still unsure about playing strategy titles like this on a handheld. Always feels more suited to an iPad or something. I bet I end up getting it though, maybe I will wait to see a review on NintendoLife.com

@PorllM I have a pretty good gaming pc and when playing on a huge map with 12 civs, the load times are pretty bad.

Really wasn't expecting this one, but I've been hearing good things. Looking forward to hearing how it plays on Swith.

I'm excited to see this sort of game on the Switch. I'd be interested to hear reports on how well this controls with the Joy-Cons. I already have this on my laptop so no need of it on the Switch but hopefully it will pave the way for further similar game releases.

I never heard of this game and will research it later today when I come home. I did quickly watch a short video in my break time. As I would love to have some train simulator on the Switch I'm wondering if this could scratch the itch for now, as I did see trains in the video. Anyone knows how deep the train system in this games goes?

@SonOfVon

from what i understand civ is really bad on an ipad pro so i wouldn't expect any better on the switch.

30 euro (with 2 DLC) in the SA eShop, really tempted now although i have it on PC.

It looked terrible in the Nintendo Direct. I hope performance is improved :/

@construx If after getting Cities AND Civ we end up getting Heroes too... I may just once and for all be convinced we are on the absolute best timeline.

This looks pretty awesome though it will get slightly lost behind Civ6 (yes I know they're different genres technically.) I do wonder how well it will run though. I can't remember a city sim that didn't run like garbage on PC let alone an ARM processor.

Well, I just bought it and tried the tutorial. Its pretty smart. Good controls. Mind you, the framerate is certainly nothing to write home about. Even on the tutorial section, where its a small town, its not the smoothest of experiences navigating and zooming in and out.

Mind you, that being said, does it really matter on a game like this. It still looks very nice, and I love the animations of the buildings getting built etc. looks very detailed and smart.

@MadCow74

Hey, I can recommend this game based on my experiences with the PC version. Not sure how it runs on the Switch as I've read it has issues with it fps. However they were based on an old hands on impression at Gamescom this year, so it could be resolved.

In terms of how deep the train simulation is I'd say fairly deep. I enjoyed it as you have the passenger side, cargo side and metro side to deal with. However having never played a train sim I cannot compare. But I'd imagine it is no way near as deep as a game specifically based around train simulation.

Either way it is a great game and I enjoyed the train simulation side.

@Turrican280

Thanks Turrican280! Sounds deep enough to have fun. I will watch some videos to see more on how this works. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

@MadCow74

Np mate!

Yeh, I’ll end up getting it again, although may wait to see if the slow down has been resolved.

Have fun!

Not too familiar with this game, but I used to love the SimCity games. I’ll look out for the review of this one.

Am overjoyed of hearing this news!

I really don’t get nintendo sometimes, this direct just blew their E3 out of the water.

I've been thinking about getting this for PS4 for months now but I know I won't be able to put the time in. Switch is a different matter though due to being portable so I may well pull the trigger sometime in the next few days.

I watched some people playing this version. And is really positive all I watched. I definitly will buy it.

@Dijita This is my thought as well. I like the game on my computer and would love it on the go! I just picture it being tough to play on the Switch

@JHDK it performs okay considering how it runs on my laptop (i7 7700hq, gtx1050 on medium-low at 900p) and still struggles to maintain 24-25fps when cities get big

I've been playing it BIG TIME on PC....I was so surprised. Frames also drops on PC ....I've been building the whole weekend, awesome. Handled works very well.... I'm amazed! I had second thoughts of the controls.....but they made and awesome job, I have no issues..... Actually the info views are much better than PC.