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Rocket League

One of Nintendo’s big E3 announcements last month was the reveal of Rocket League for Switch. Psyonix’s VP of publishing Jeremy Dunham spoke more about the game in an interview with GamesIndustry.

Dunham started out by saying that the Switch version “is a bit of a passion project” and noted how “Nintendo has been very open with giving us whatever resources that we need”:

“It is a bit of a passion project for us and we want to make sure it is done exactly the way we want it to be done. Nintendo has been very open with giving us whatever resources that we need, answering any questions that we have, allowing us to do cross-network play, which is a big deal and very important to us and they had no problem with that at all. That was the very first question I asked them. I said: ‘If we are going to commit to doing this, would you guys allow us to do cross-platform?’ And they told me that if it is important to us, then we will do cross-platform. There wasn’t even any hesitation.”

Psyonix has teamed up with Adult Swim and Adult Swim Games for a new partnership within Rocket League. As part of the game’s second anniversary update, players will have access to free customization items. Rick and Morty will be available as Antennas, along with ‘Cromulon,’ ‘Mr. Meeseeks,’ and ‘Mr. PBH’ Toppers, an ‘Interdimensional GB’ Rocket Boost, and ‘Sanchez DC-137’ Wheels. The ‘Cromulon’ Topper can drop as a Painted item as well.

Switch owners won’t have to worry about being left behind. On Twitter, Psyonix confirmed that the same content will be distributed on Nintendo’s platform.


Rocket League will be out on Switch this holiday.

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Switch was made to be compatible with Unreal Engine 4. Unreal Engine 3, however, is another story. The older version isn’t supported as well, which made it a bit tricky to bring Rocket League to Switch.

Psyonix head Jeremy Dunham talked with GamesBeat about porting Rocket League to Switch, which is being done with some help from Panic Button – the same team that worked on the Xbox One version. He said:

“We feel really confident about it. In the beginning, we weren’t so sure. We had to do custom work. The Switch by itself doesn’t have inherent Unreal 3 support. It only has Unreal 4. To support 3, we had to do custom work.”

Dunham also reiterated what we’ve heard previously – that Rocket League will be 720p and 60 frames per second at all times.

“The main compromise we had to make is we’re running the game in 720p rather than 1080p, even on the TV. It’s our opinion that it’s much more beneficial for the game to run fast at 60 frames per second than to look the absolute best. We’ll ship at 60 frames per second for the docked version and the undocked version.”

Dunham also had some encouraging words about the overall state of Rocket League on Switch. The team “didn’t think we would have it running this smooth, this early.”

“We’re actually ahead of where we thought we’d be. We didn’t think we would have it running this smooth, this early. For a while we were concerned about whether we’d have anything to show at E3 at all. We have a very talented team at Psyonix. Our engineers have done a lot of hard work to make sure this runs as well as it does already. We’ve already discovered things in the last few weeks that we weren’t aware of a few weeks ago. It’s already made the game perform incredibly. We’re very encouraged.”

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Psyonix isn’t setting its sights on creating sequels to Rocket League. Rather than turning it into a franchise, the main game will continue to receive updates and released across new generations of hardware.

Jeremy Dunham from Psyonix told Engadget in a new interview:

“We’re not trying to build six Rocket Leagues. We’re not looking forward to when Rocket League 2 and 3 and 4 are coming out. Rocket League is the game we’re gonna keep updating. It’s important to us to keep that going, cross-generation, across multiple platforms without sacrificing anything.”

Rocket League is a similar position as Minecraft. Minecraft itself has been so hugely popular that a sequel hasn’t been necessary, and the game is continually updated and put out on new systems.

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The fact that Rocket League is in the works for Switch is big news. But last week, it was also announced that cross-play will be supported. When Rocket League launches on Switch, players will be able to battle against those on other systems like Xbox One and PC.

Nintendo of America corporate communications director Charlie Scibetta spoke about the decision to introduce cross-play on Switch as part of an interview with GamesBeat. It’s all a part of “trying to be more flexible as a company,” he explained.

Here’s the relevant portion of the interview:

IGN has more on the new Switch version of Rocket League. The site spoke with Psyonix vice president Jeremy Dunham and producer Bobby Garza about the game.

Psyonix is including all features from other versions on Switch. This includes Season mode, Hoops, Drop Shot, Rumble, and Snowday. Up to eight Switch units will be supported with local multiplayer, and up to four players to play splitscreen when the Switch is docked and two when undocked.

We’ve heard that the team is targeting 60 frames per second on Switch. That includes splitscreen as well, but we won’t know for sure until release. Other potential features like motion control and HD Rumble are also undecided.

Rocket League

This information comes from Psyonix vice president Jeremy Dunham…

– Even if Rocket League isn’t the most graphically challenging game, it’s very dependent on the physics, which forced Psyonix to trade off marginally better resolution if it meant getting the game to run properly on the Switch version
– Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s success Switch was a huge motivator for the Psyonix team to get it right on the Switch

“In terms of pure greenlighting for when this project started, three months ago. If you wanna talk about when we first started investigating, messing with dev kits, late last year was about when we first started looking at it.”

– Nintendo first contacted Psyonix about a potential Switch outing before the console was even officially announced
– 8-player local multiplayer
– two-player split screen on a single Switch with each player using a single Joy-Con (party style)
– Works with the Switch Pro Controller

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Switch owners have no need to be concerned about Rocket League’s pricing on Switch. There won’t be any markup – it’ll be $20, just like all other versions. That news comes straight from the developers.

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Rocket League has continued to expand since its debut in 2015. However, it has yet to appear on any Nintendo platform.

With Switch, Psyonix Studios’ vice president Jeremy Dunham says that the team is “evaluating” the possibility. A decision will ultimately be made based on “the technical requirements” as well as “community demand”.

Dunham told IGN:

“Just like all the other platforms, we are evaluating it. We’re looking to see what the technical requirements are. We’re looking to see what kind of true community demand there is. We’re looking to see how it would benefit the community as a whole. So we’re still in that evaluation phase. It’s definitely too early to say that it wouldn’t happen, but it’s also definitely too early to say that it would.”

Psyonix, the developer of Rocket League, has expressed interest in Switch. However, the team isn’t committing to the console just yet.

A note from Psyonix reads passed along by reader Matthew M reads:

“We are excited as you are regarding the release of Nintendo Switch however, we don’t have enough information at this time if it will happen. For the mean time, let’s both keep our fingers crossed that it will. For all the latest information on upcoming releases, updates, and other news, please visit the Rocket League Facebook page or follow us on Twitter!”

This actually isn’t the first time Psyonix has spoken about its interest in Switch. They did so when it was known as NX as well.


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