The Switch 2 is promising to give players more power than its predecessor, with ports of Cyberpunk 2077 and Street Fighter 6 showing its full potential. This hybrid console is going to allow for more powerful games to run on a Nintendo console. Naturally, fans can’t wait to see Square Enix port over their Kingdom Hearts HD collections to this powerhouse system.
But if we’re being real here, why aren’t these HD collections already on the first Switch? We can maybe excuse the third game from being included since it was made with the PS4 in mind, but the other games could have easily been ported.
Why is it so difficult to port PS2, PSP, and 3DS games to the Switch?
Just to play devil’s advocate, Square Enix lost the code to the original Kingdom Hearts games on PS2. They had to rebuild everything from scratch for those PS3 re-releases, which were later ported to PS4. Acting like porting these games is easy is wrong, so we understand to some degree why they didn’t bring over these ports.
Cloud gaming is also a convenient way to “bring” over stronger games to weaker systems. It’s not just the Switch that uses cloud gaming, since even Valve’s Steam Deck has to rely on that for really powerful games. Some fans even prefer streaming games, usually online multiplayer titles, since they already need the internet just to work.
Here’s the thing, though: the updated Kingdom Hearts ports come from PS3 games. A ton of games from that era have been ported successfully to Switch with little to no issues. There are also impressive ports that came from modern systems, like Dragon Quest 11 and The Witcher 3, that put these cloud collections to shame. It would have been one thing if these were all really powerful games, but all of them ran on a PS3 and PS4 without much issue.
Needing the internet just to play Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts 2, or Birth by Sleep on Switch is ridiculous. There are plenty of games that look and run better than these titles, most of which don’t need wi-fi to work. Some of these games even come from Square Enix, like Trials of Mana and Crisis Core: Reunion, making the cloud ports look more embarrassing.
Porting games to other systems isn’t easy, especially if they have weaker hardware like the original Switch, but these collections didn’t need to be cloud versions. It feels like Square Enix rushed to port these games because Sora was announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Maybe it was part of the deal, but the company could have delayed native ports since Switch fans are patient.
It took Atlus a few years to bring Persona 5 Royal to Switch after Joker was announced for Smash. Just saying.
Switch 2’s newfound power ensures that Kingdom Hearts will run fine on this new Nintendo system. But Square Enix didn’t have to wait for a system this strong, since the early games weren’t exactly system killers.