Game makers appear to be completely smitten with Nintendo’s upcoming Nintendo Switch, the hybrid system due out later this week after a very long wait. Metal Gear auteur Hideo Kojima has already pronounced the system as ‘a gamer’s dream,’ and now, it looks like Hajime Tabata, the director of Final Fantasy 15, is joining him in singing praises of the system.
In an interview with Polygon, Tabata talked about the Switch, and how to him, as someone who has worked with handhelds in the past, it represents a dream machine. “Given my track record… I’ve worked on handheld titles, but I’ve also worked on console games,” Tabata said. “So the fact that Switch is both at the same time is really fascinating to me. I’m really interested in coming up with ideas and how to capitalize on that technology and how to create the best experience possible on the technology. But I’m not quite sure that I have it yet.
“You have your Switch sitting in front of the television and you’re playing on the big screen and then you take it out, put it down on the table. It becomes a monitor. You take out the two Joy-Cons, and you play with a friend … it doesn’t stop there, because in my mind, it would be really perfect if you could then take this new monitor and use it like a tablet, for example, and play different apps on it like you would on your iPhone or your Android. So basically, it’s accomplishing three tasks in one machine. It’s kind of like the dream machine.”
Tabata did confirm that while right now, his team isn’t working on bringing any game to it, in their free time, they do mess around with the system, seeing just how far they can push it. “While I may not be working on anything for it at this point in time, a lot of people on the staff are really interested in the Switch,” he said. “Myself included! Many of the people on the dev team are older; they’re married; they have kids. One of the things they’d like to do is create something they could also play with their children, or that their children could play on their own, for example.”
Given how positive he is on the system, and his overall experimentation with it, I think there is scope for him to bring something to the Switch eventually- can it somehow be a version of Final Fantasy 15? We don’t know, but let’s hope so!
