Nintendo Life interview with Ichiro Hazama reveals that native Kingdom Hearts Switch ports are "undecided"

[OrpheusJoshua 126]

Gaming website Nintendo Life recently spoke to Kingdom Hearts series producer Ichiro Hazama about why the Nintendo Switch ports for the remaining games will be Cloud only.

Hazama stated that there have been various difficulties with bringing over the titles to this hardware, with storage capacity being the only explicitly stated one. 

Nintendo Life then asked if Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 Remix could at least receive a native Nintendo Switch version. Hazama replied with the following statement:

Quote

 "At this moment in time, the production of a native version is undecided. We believe that the Cloud version is currently the best way to deliver the Kingdom Hearts series to Nintendo Switch players, but we are always excited to hear to feedback from our fans and want to thank them for all their support."

This is undoubtedly a vague answer, but since it isn't an outright 'no,' then it is possible that fans respectfully expressing their desire for native ports will be the key to this hopeful event occurring. 

You can view the article from Nintendo Life containing this exchange here. 

If you missed it, check out our Kingdom Hearts Chess Set and Super Smah Bros. Ultimate + Both Fighter Passes giveaways.

We also provided a digestible round-up of all the recent Kingdom Hearts news that every fan should be aware of. 

View full article

[RoyalXIII 18]

They're waiting for the Switch Pro/4K I'm betting.

That's also probably why the cloud gaming versions aren't called the "All-in-One" package, so it'd be easier to tell them apart when the native versions come out.

[ocean's rage 772]

great now i dont know whether or not to hold out for this possibility 

[tlrpttmn 65]

6 hours ago, RoyalXIII said:

They're waiting for the Switch Pro/4K I'm betting.

That's also probably why the cloud gaming versions aren't called the "All-in-One" package, so it'd be easier to tell them apart when the native versions come out.

good catch for the new naming! alot of games are not only limited to some shortcomings of the switch, but the sheer compression that needs to take place for games to fit on the expensive to produce cartridges. 

[Evi98 15]

A handheld doesn’t need 4K due to pixel density, maybe output for 4k upscaling on a tv. What the switch really needs is other hardware upgrades, but then that wouldn’t really solve the cartridge issue

I’ve just come to accept that kh probably won’t come to switch natively

[wasabi_curry 1]

Anyone got any juicy rumors

:copium

[Inçendyne 31]

It'd be a bit difficult to fit all of that data for KH3 on the cartridges as well as hope the Nintendo Switches can handle it. All of the compression that would be used would cut into the quality and performance.

[Plancake 3]

Most of the storage space taken up by 1.5 + 2.5 is the remastered music and the ds game movies. If they found a way to stream just the movies instead of the games then they could easily save 20gb

[Superslash 5]

At that point just make it pull up youtube when you click on days or coded 💀

[Inçendyne 31]

I don't think the movies do it enough justice. It'd be nice if they ported or remade 358/2 Days and Re:Coded to be playable on current-gen consoles or at least Nintendo Switch.

[mayareader 2]

👆 i would love to replay days with those crispy new graphics

[Inçendyne 31]

CoM got ported w/ a new mechanism (card duels) added and DDD got a port for the II.8 HD collection to be fully playable on console, so those two can as well.

[Evi98 15]

I’d love if they did that too, since Days is one of my favourite games in the series, but I’m also happy that the series and cast are actually moving forward now in the story.

I kind of just want them to focus on that, rather than what we already know and have seen

Especially since they’d have to remake the game from scratch, unlike DDD they can’t really salvage any of it when it comes to Coded and Days. I guess I’m just slightly worried of the series getting sidetracked again.

I’d love if they did that too, since Days is one of my favourite games in the series, but I’m also happy that the series and cast are actually moving forward now in the story.

Even melody of memory moved the plot forward a little, and they were able to use that in the marketing/trailers

[Evi98 15]

nani this isn’t kh general

Uhh, More on topic

I just realised it’s only about 4/5 months until the anniversary

So fingers crossed only a few more months till more news

[Inçendyne 31]

I'm not so sure we are really out of the Xehanort saga yet since they've yet to release the chapter update for Dark Road.

Being that it's listed for Winter and the 20th anniversary tag was listed. I'm guessing it won't come until early next year.

[Evi98 15]

True, but Dark Road did also show new backstory we haven’t seen

Whereas we’ve had the story of Days recapped several times

So even though Dark Road dipped back into nort stuff, it was still fresh and hints at the future is my point I guess

[Inçendyne 31]

Being set in the past, it felt backwards direction wise. After it's concluded, we can move forward.

[Evi98 15]

True

It’s a shame the ending got delayed but oh well

[Inçendyne 31]

Story of the mobile games will be accessible w/in the app offline on mobile devices, so story ports for them aren't things I expect.

[Evi98 15]

Yeah I feel the same, though I’m sure lots of people will be confused because they never played the mobile games

[Inçendyne 31]

It should be downloadable on the app stores as well and not require prior game save data to access the glorified theater mode.

[Evi98 15]

I wonder if we will get a verum rex spinoff? teaser trailer, or kh4 teaser trailer next year as part of the anniversary stuff. Trying to not get my hopes up for it, but they did say to expect news haha

I mean, it’s not really making any gacha money anymore

Or maybe I’m wrong haha

To randomly change the subject yet again (A.K.A my attempt to get this back on-topic ),

I wonder if we will get a verum rex spinoff? teaser trailer, or kh4 teaser trailer next year as part of the anniversary stuff. Trying to not get my hopes up for it, but they did say to expect news haha

[Inçendyne 31]

It's not like it will require much online support. It will apparently be fully functional offline once data is downloaded from the app store(s).

[GoldenDrummer730#4323 24]

I feel like we can move over to KH General Chat now

[Inçendyne 31]

Simply responding to comments about the interview's statement about the uncertainty of Nintendo Switch ports