Bethesda’s Fallout 76 won’t make it to the Nintendo Switch

Kareem Anderson

Despite its Phoenix-like rise in the gaming industry this console generation, Nintendo’s Switch console seems to be struggling much like its predecessor to court developers of smash hit franchises in porting games to the new hardware.

Nintendo has continually made a name for itself by testing and pushing the boundaries of gaming console hardware often to the detriment of fans looking to have cross-platform parity in their gaming experiences.

Unfortunately, the amazing sales of Nintendo’s latest hardware offering have yet to reverse the ‘snubbing’ trend of massively popular game developers.

Polygon is reporting that the highly anticipated Fallout 76 will not be coming to the Nintendo Switch. Despite Fallout 76 developers porting previous smash hits such as Skyrim, Doom and Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus to the console, Bethesda has seemingly drawn the line at Fallout 76.

As one might postulate, Bethesda’s Pete Hines hints at technical reasons for Fallout 76’s Nintendo Switch omission.

“If the game will work on it, we want it to be on every platform possible,” Hines stated. “Fallout 76 is not because it just wasn’t doable. But honestly, there is no game in development that we haven’t had a conversation about [bringing it to Switch].”

As it stands now, Bethesda is one of the premier gaming studios on the Switch, offering a distinct M-rated experience that even Nintendo shy away from in its publishing, leaving the studio with a competitive advantage over other third-party publishers, according to Polygon’s reporting.

Fallout 76 is in beta on PlayStation 4, PC and Xbox One and the omission of the Switch presumably draws the rhetoric around fidelity versus convenient on-the-go gaming experiences. If Red Dead Redemption 2 is any indicator, the Xbox One X may be the destination for gamers looking for the most visually impressive experience around.