ARK: Survival Evolved is officially coming to the Nintendo Switch. The announcement came earlier this week during Epic Games’ keynote presentation at the 2018 Game Developers Conference, in which Jeremy Stieglitz and Jesse Rapczak – co-creative directors of the game – revealed that the game would be released on the portable console sometime this fall.
The Switch version of ARK: Survival Evolved will include all of the features and content from the original game that was released in August 2017, after spending over two years in Steam Early Access. In addition to the hundreds of hours available for single-player exploration, players will also be able connect online with other players to form tribes and venture into the vast world of Ark together.
Studio Wildcard has been hard at work creating new content for the original game, including the expansion packs of ARK: Scorched Earth and ARK: Aberration, with a third expansion, Ark: Extinction, planned for release sometime this year. In addition, the action-adventure survival video game has already seen ports from the PC to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, as well as the recently announced free-to-play versions of the game for iOS and Android devices. It was only a matter of time before the game saw a Nintendo Switch release.
In addition to the reveal announcement, Stieglitz actually presented a live-demo of the Switch version of the game while on stage. The visuals and game play on the device looked to be as one would expect for a live-presentation within a controlled environment. While the ports to the Xbox One and PS4 were not without their shares of technical problems, such as frame rate issues, the sales success that Studio Wildcard has had with bringing ARK: Survival Evolved to other consoles leaves little reason to believe that a Switch version of the game would result in a lesser outcome.
Ultimately, porting ARK: Survival Evolved to the Nintendo Switch makes sense and should be a lucrative move for the studio. A Switch version of the game will cater to an audience that wants to play the game on the go, but may want a more immersive gaming experience than a mobile device would be able to provide.
