Square Enix announced today, to joyous JRPG fans outside of Japan, that Dragon Quest 11, the eleventh entry in the beloved, long running franchise, will be releasing in the west this year on September 4 on PC and PS4. That was great news—but conspicuously missing from the announcement were the Nintendo versions of the game. In Japan, the game was out on 3DS and PS4, and a Switch version has also been announced.
While Square confirmed the 3DS version would not be coming over to the west, they did say that the Switch version will, but not until later. And speaking to IGN, they explained why the Switch version is delayed so much—apparently, the porting is running into a host of technical challenges.
“We are also developing the Switch version for Europe and North America,” reads Square Enix’s statement, “but development is expected to take a long time from a technological standpoint as well, so we still have a long way to go until its release”.
While this is a bummer, it also follows from the fact that the game struggled to run properly even on the PS4, where it only hit 900p—it is no surprise that Square Enix is having trouble getting the game running on the far more technologically challenged Switch. For now, if you want to play the game, you’ll have to get it on PC or PS4.