Irony is an interesting part of the gaming industry, as sometimes even great successes can have surprises that the game developer or publisher didn’t expect. How they react to that and how it influences the next game in their franchises depends on who the people in charge are. Regarding, Firaxis, the long-beloved publisher is working hard on Civilization VII, the next entry in its massively popular world-building series. To that end, they are implementing new features that have never been done before, and they are doing them because of the Nintendo Switch. How so? The franchise wasn’t on the platform until the 6th entry, and that’s when things changed.
At first, it was just a “standard port” of the 6thtitle. However, after the launch of the game, Firaxis realized that the game was actually doing really well on Switch! Just as important, the core fanbase, which in this case was PC players, was buying the game AGAIN for the Switch!
In a chat with Gamesindustry.biz, executive producer Dennis Shirk acknowledged that Firaxis didn’t think things would go like that, yet it did:
“We weren’t sure when [the game] first came out on Switch. We were like: ‘Are people going to play it for that long on a handheld?’ And the answer was yes, yes they will.”
He went on to note the reason the team felt this was happening:
“We hadn’t expected Switch to be a huge thing. But suddenly, it became a really huge thing. We found that a lot of our PC players were getting the game on Switch because they could take their game with them. And so with [Civilization VII], you can transfer your save game and keep playing. It’s compelling.”
Very compelling, indeed! That’s honestly one of the true wonders of the Nintendo Switch that many people didn’t know they wanted until it came out. The ability to play the game on the go, no matter where you are, is very freeing. So, for the PC crew, who always had to be at the computer to work on their civilizations and construct their empires at very specific times when they could be on the computer, this arguably changed the game in a big way.
Shirk also noted that with the 7th entry, the team will release all the entries simultaneously, both on console and PC. The crew even brought in help to work on the ports so that every version could be the best version possible.
