There is increasing reason to believe that Tango Gameworks’ 2023 shadow drop and instant hit Hi-Fi Rush is coming to the Nintendo Switch.
As reported by Windows Central’s Jez Corden, the first hint of this release came from Nate The Hate. He revealed on his podcast that an “acclaimed, game of the year-worthy” Xbox exclusive will be releasing on a competing platform.
The next hint came from Resetera user lolilolailo. Rather than say it directly, lolilolailo responded to another post that guessed: “Hi-Fi Rush available on Switch, I’ll bet.”
His response? “And you’ll win.”
The final source corroborating this is none other than Jez Corden himself. In Jez’ own words:
“Given the track record of lolilolailo, Nate, and my own sourcing on this, I think the rumors will probably pan out into reality — but until things are fully confirmed, remember to take this kind of stuff with a grain of salt.”
When Hi-Fi Rush first released on January 25, 2023, on Xbox, Steam, and Game Pass, it was clear that this title was not a technically challenging project. At least, not in terms of graphics and performance.
The game is a rhythm based action game with stylized graphics, deliberately designed to evoke the look of a cartoon. So, it doesn’t have the technical requirements of a Call of Duty title, that would make people question if it could run.
But the rhythm based gameplay took the lion’s share of development time. As Tango Gameworks staff have pointed out in interviews, there was a real challenge in ensuring that the game would keep following the player’s rhythm, as opposed to the other way around.
The truth is, this aspect of the game hasn’t been fully explained to the public, and that could be a technical hurdle in making such a Switch port.
So, we may be up for a port from a studio like Panic Button and Double Eleven, which is technically impressive for the Switch, but may not be up to the quality of the game on Xbox or PC.
In any case, Xbox fans like Jez Corden himself are being critical about Xbox’s multiplatform approach because of this rumor. Microsoft has been open about having such a policy, even making it an argument to get the Activision deal approved.
The degree to which this is a problem will depend entirely on the Xbox fans, but perhaps it needs to be pointed out, that not only is this on a much lower wavelength than Starfield coming to the PlayStation 5, but, as Jez put it on Twitter, “Xbox will still have more full-blown exclusives than it ever has.”
