While Hi-Rez Entertainment’s Paladins has been available on the Nintendo Switch for almost two years now, the popular battle royale variant of the game, called Realm Royale, has been missing from Nintendo’s platform—this in spite of the success Fortnite has found on the system.

However, that will be changing soon. Realm Royale has been prematurely announced for Nintendo Switch. The announcement was via a now-deleted video, but Nintendo Everything got a screen cap of the video saying the game is available to play on the Switch “now”—which it obviously isn’t. It seems like the video may have been put up early by mistake, but also that the game is indeed coming shortly. Why else would the video be ready to go?

That said, for now, it’s not officially confirmed, so don’t celebrate just yet. If you want to play it, it’s available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. But if this and Apex Legends do indeed come to Switch, Fortnite could see some competition on the platform.

Hi-Rez Studios’ free to play battle royale title, Realm Royale launched for consoles – namely Xbox One and PS4 – back in August of last year, and the developers had stated their intention to enable cross-play for the title long ago. In a new update, they have now confirmed that cross-platform capabilities have finally been enabled in the game across Xbox One and PC.

That includes not only cross-play, but also cross-progression, so you can have a unified progression across Xbox One, Steam, and Discord. Notably missing is, of course, the PS4. Hi-Rez Studios have, in the past, publicly called out Sony for allegedly playing favourites with which games they allow cross-play for, but Sony have gone on to deny any such favouritism. Hopefully that means that cross-play being enabled for Realm Royale on the PS4 as well is more a matter of “when” than “if”, but it’s hard to say either way for sure right now.

You can check out more details on the latest update in the video below.

While Sony allows full cross-platform play in some games on the PS4, such as with Rocket League and Fortnite, they aren’t letting every developer who wants to implement it do it either, unlike Microsoft or Nintendo. We already saw the developers of War Thunder, Gaijin Entertainment, call Sony out on playing favorites with doling out permission for cross-platform play recently. Now, it seems Hi-Rez Studios, the developers of Smite, Paladins, and Realm Royale, are joining in, too.

President Stewart Chisam recently posted a tweet calling Sony out on exactly this on Twitter. For people who believe there are no tangible benefits to a feature like that, Chisam also posted several that his company’s games saw once cross-platform play between Xbox One and Switch was implemented, including a reduction in wait times and bad matches for players.

On the whole, I stand with these developers on this issue—cross-platform play is the future, and Sony needs to just stop picking and choosing who it lets implement the feature.

https://twitter.com/schisam/status/1093887667190808576?s=21

Xplay improves match quality in multiplayer games. When we added crossplay between Paladins Xbox and Switch:
>> Wait time reduced 30%
>> Level spread between players down 40%
>> 40% reduction in ELO std deviation per match
>> 80% reduction in "Bad" matches (by our internal defn)

— Stewart Chisam (@schisam) February 8, 2019

Paladins, Smite, and Realm Royale developer Hi-Rez Studios is undergoing some big changes. It recently announced via a press release that it will be splitting up into three new studios that will each handle a different game. Titan Forge Games will be in charge of Smite, the studio’s popular action MOBA. Paladins will be handled by Evil Mojo, while Heroic Leap will manage its battle royale spin-off Realm Royale.

Managing all three teams will be general manager Chris Larson, who is formerly an executive producer for Smite and Paladins. The idea behind establishing separate studios for its games is to allow for more dedicated support to each individual community. Of course, it also allows the studio to handle multiple games better.

“The establishment of Titan Forge, Heroic Leap and Evil Mojo as standalone studios enables each of our development teams to fulfil their maximum potential and stay hyper-focused on serving their individual player communities,” said Larson. “Our games are built to provide near constant updates over many years. By giving each major game its own dedicated studio and identity, we empower them to control their own destiny and focus exclusively on their player communities. By structuring ourselves in this manner, we allow the organization to scale to multiple games more easily while ensuring our existing game communities receive a better, more focused service than ever before.”

Paladins released earlier this year after being in early access since 2016, and it’s received a pretty consistent stream of updates, new heroes, and content. Smite continues to receive new updates and events as well, while Realm Royale is still in early access and heading to consoles at some point.

Hi-Rez Studios announced not too long ago that Realm Royale, it’s battle royale off-shoot of Paladins, would be coming to Xbox One and PS4. The class-based shooter will go into closed beta first, and those who were interested can sign up beforehand. The first round of the closed beta invites was sent on August 1st, and while the overall size of this group will be small, more invites are coming.

Hi-Rez Studios community manager John Nash said on the game’s official site, “We appreciate the flood of interest in Realm Royale on console. For now, our closed testing audience for console is staying quite small while we refine some core mechanics. We hope to expand the size of the closed testing soon to a much larger audience.

“We’ll be making further technical improvements to the game and doing more testing as those changes are implemented. We want to make sure our console players get the best possible experience with Realm Royale. Thank you for your understanding and continued support. We’ll release more information about Console Closed Beta at a later date.”

Those who’re itching to get into Realm Royale but haven’t received a beta code till now can take heart. The game is currently available on PC via Steam. Furthermore, it’s free to play, though players aren’t too thrilled about a $15 cosmetic Alpha Pack being sold, especially since the game is still in the alpha phase. If the development schedule of Paladins is anything to go by, it could be a while before Realm Royale is fully launched.

In the meantime, what are your thoughts on the game? Let us know in the comments below, and whether you’d be interested in the console beta.

Hi-Rez Studios’ Realm Royale, a free to play battle royale offshoot of Paladins, is coming to Xbox One and PS4. Played by over 3 million users on Steam Early Access, the game combines crafting and classes with a medieval fantasy aesthetic. It’s found some pretty decent success, despite the market being crowded by Fortnite: Battle Royale and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, not to mention the negative reception it received when it was first announced as Paladins: Battlegrounds.

If you’re interested in trying out Realm Royale before it hits consoles, then sign up for the closed beta here. Executive producer Rory Newbrough stated, “Since Realm Royale first released on PC, the top three questions on social media have been ‘Console?,’ ‘PS4?,’ and ‘Xbox?’ I’m not sure if any of those are actually questions, they were more like demands. But we understand our community wants Realm Royale on console, and we’re thrilled to announce console closed beta testing starts next week.”

Much like other battle royale titles, Realm Royale is about dropping onto a map with up to 100 players and fighting to be the last one standing. Along with item rarities, armour and health potions and avoiding the fog of death, the game allows players to craft different items and abilities. Each class also has its own unique abilities, prompting even more variety. That’s not including mounts, which allow for faster transportation.