Square Enix is ‘undecided’ on native versions of Kingdom Hearts for Switch

Earlier this month, Nintendo announced that the Kingdom Hearts games are finally coming to the Nintendo Switch. There is a catch though, the full series, including the 1.5 + 2.5 remaster, are coming to Switch via cloud streaming, with no native versions announced. This was somewhat disappointing news, but Square Enix has not yet ruled out a proper native version.

During an interview with Nintendo Life published this week, Kingdom Hearts producer, Ichiro Hazama, was asked about the possibility of a native version for Switch, particularly after seeing native ports of classic titles like Final Fantasy X/X-2. Hazama explained that “at this moment in time, the production of a native version is still undecided”.

While a true Switch port has not been ruled out for Kingdom Hearts, Hazama did also note that there are technical hurdles that developers will need to clear:

“For some time, our director Tetsuya Nomura had expressed his desire to deliver the Kingdom Hearts series to Nintendo Switch players, him having seen and heard the demand, and so a great deal of consideration went into this internally. Bringing these titles to Nintendo Switch proved to be quite difficult for various reasons, including the storage capacity of the hardware”.

For now, Square Enix maintains that the best way to bring Kingdom Hearts to Switch is via Cloud Service. However, there is still a small glimmer of hope that we'll at least see the original two games running natively on Switch hardware someday.

KitGuru Says: If we can get titles like DOOM Eternal and The Witcher 3 natively on the Switch, then I'm sure it would be possible to bring Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 Remix and Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Final Prologue Chapter to the system. The question is whether or not the market is big enough for Square Enix to make that investment.

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