We have a long history of trying to bring Factorio to other platforms, including consoles and mobile phones (not including April Fools). We even wor

Friday Facts #370 - The journey to Nintendo Switch | Factorio

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2022-09-23 15:30:27

We have a long history of trying to bring Factorio to other platforms, including consoles and mobile phones (not including April Fools). We even worked with some external companies, but the projects never even got to the point where they would run technically, let alone the complicated part of making the game playable using controllers or touch screen. After all the attempts, we even had a Friday Facts prepared that was going to say something along the lines of "we don't plan to bring Factorio to other platforms".

I am a big fan of the Nintendo Switch system, especially the detachable Joy-Con controllers, which you can hold one in each hand. Porting Factorio to Nintendo Switch was something I had in mind for a very long time. At around February 2021, as we were discussing the future of the team and what project we should work on next, I decided I want to try and port Factorio to Nintendo Switch. After some initial research, it didn't look like it will take too long...

Before I continue the story, I'd like to mention that the project as a whole had a lot of unknowns: Is a technical port possible without a major rewrite of the graphics backend? Can the Nintendo Switch system even run the game at an acceptable performance level? Is it possible to play the game using controllers? Is the project not too big?