LawBreakers developer talks about difficulties of a Switch port, claims not enough buttons

You can’t make this up

So here’s a story you don’t see everyday. During an interview with Dan Nanni, the Lead Designer for the upcoming LawBreakers, GamingBolt brought up that the game would not be coming to the Switch. Dan was quick to remind them that the lack of a Switch port wasn’t exactly set in stone, to which they further asked if a port could happen should the system continue to sell well.

That’s when Dan gave one of, if not the, weakest excuses for why a port would be difficult, while showing he doesn’t fully know the platform.

Dan stated that he felt the the hardest part with the Switch would be the controls. To make this as clear as possible, this is a direct quote from the interview: “Look at the game that we have right now, and we just literally by the skin of our teeth put the entire game [on] the control pad that the PlayStation has. That means that we could probably make it work for the Xbox One in someway, right? But if you’re looking at the Switch the base controller that’s on the unit, it doesn’t have as many buttons.”

This, as some of you know, is entirely false. The only control scheme on the Switch with less buttons than the PlayStation 4’s DualShock 4 is when you are using a single Joy-Con. Both the dual Joy-Con and Pro Controller schemes have the same amount of buttons. Furthermore, it is not mandatory to include all control schemes, as one of this year’s biggest games, Breath of the Wild, cannot be played with a single Joy-Con, while others like Voez are touchscreen only.

GamingBolt then responded with the next best thing, which is why not try a motion control scheme. Which makes sense, as that would free up the right stick for different actions besides camera control. To which Dan replied that it could be done, but the player would not be looking at their screen anymore while they are playing. As anyone that’s used motion controls before, or played the recent Splatoon 2 demo, can tell you, that’s absolutely not the case.

Since the interview has gone up, the team at LawBreakers has acknowledged the mistake about the number of buttons via a little joke on their Twitter account. However, the point about the motion controls has gone unaddressed. I’m honestly surprised though that, out of every excuse that could’ve been used originally, they used the number of inputs on the controllers. I understand he was under pressure, but wouldn’t it have been better to have used the tried-and-true excuse of the power gap between the Switch and PlayStation 4 being the potential roadblock? I’m surprised that’s not the default PR response for everyone when the topic comes up.

LawBreakers Interview: “It’s Been a Crazy Evolution” [GamingBolt]