Rumor: Shift Up Undecided On Switch 2 Port For Stellar Blade, But Recently Received Dev Kits

Shift Up seems interested in bringing Stellar Blade to the Nintendo Switch 2.

As originally shared by Wario64, this was reported by Korean community and news website PlayForum. Shift Up provided this official statement to the website (translated with DeepL):

Nothing has been finalized regarding the development of a Switch 2 version of Stellar Blade, but we’re keeping our options open and reviewing them internally.

However, PlayForum’s report also claims that Shift Up recently acquired Switch 2 dev kits. They claim that the kit includes an unpublished API, testing software and debugging tools. If their reporting is accurate, this is actually the most information that has been publicly shared about Switch 2’s developer kits thus far.

PlayForum also shared a picture showing the company gifting the entire Shift Up staff with Switch 2 consoles each. Kim Hyung Tae himself is seen Microsoft on hand hosting what appears to be a company distribution event, which is similar to what they did when the company provided PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles to their staff.

To be clear, of course, these consoles are not the same thing as the Switch 2 dev kit, which may be why PlayForum shared additional details on them. While we can certainly laud Shift Up management for being generous, they also clearly have a pattern of giving their employees consoles when they are preparing ports of games for them.

Interestingly enough, this rumor also seems to line up with a detail from their financial report last month that led to speculation. On page 18 of their May 16 2025 investor report presentation, they had a slide showing that their IP expansion plans for Stellar Blade included “platform expansion” and “sequel”. You can see said slide below.

At the time, some fans were speculating about Switch 2 and Xbox ports, but most concluded that they were only talking about the recent successful Steam release. It may be that Shift Up was interested in expanding their games’ reach to both the Switch 2 and the Xbox, but they couldn’t commit if they weren’t sure they could make these respective ports.

And this rumor seems to hint that Sony is open to bringing Stellar Blade to rival platforms, after they had secured its launch and a certain period of exclusivity. While it’s perceived that Sony is still holding onto console exclusivity, they have discreetly loosened up on this in the past few years. They have published games on Nintendo Switch in various ways, such as licensing the Katamari games to Bandai Namco, or stepping in as the publisher for Lego Horizon Adventures. Sony also publishes games like Destiny 2 to Xbox as well, so Stellar Blade on Xbox is not entirely out of the question.

Overall this is good news for Shift Up, as it now seems that Sony won’t tie them to the traditional console exclusive model that third parties usually agree to. And could this be the future direction of the industry as a whole?