The Nintendo Switch is a console I’ve really fallen in love with over recent months. I’ve been using it to play Dark Souls on the go as well as catching up on older games I’ve missed over the years. Without it I’d probably never have played Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze or Okami and I’m thankful for that, I’ve missed out. That’s not to say it doesn’t have great original games all of its own, hello Super Mario Odyssey.
While I love the system I’ve only ever seen it as a side dish to the main course that is the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, however, that’s all about to change if recent rumors are anything to go by. Direct Feed Games, Via Youtube, have been in touch with their sources and announced that Xbox games shall be coming to the Switch this year.
Specifically, the wonderful indie title Ori and the Blind Forest will see a full release on the system with more games to potentially follow. That’s not all. We’ve already heard about Microsoft bringing their Xbox App to the Switch, what we hadn’t heard until now is that they will be bringing their Game Pass service to it as well. Can you imagine playing some of the games from that service on the Switch? Game Pass has games such as Gears of War, Halo, Bioshock, and Forza. Titles that Switch owners would no doubt love to play.
Now, let’s address the elephant in the room. Power. Obviously, the Switch isn’t powerful enough to play these games, however, this will be solved by streaming them using the previously announced Project xCloud. If this all works well it’ll be fantastic. After all, streaming isn’t a new thing to the Switch, at least not in Japan. They already have streamable versions of Resident Evil 7 and Assasins Creed: Odyssey on the Switch. I’ve seen a fair few videos of Assasins Creed and it seems to run and play really well so I have hope that the Microtendo partnership will come together.
Besides performance, the only other question I’d have would be how it all works. I already have Game Pass on the Xbox, would I be able to use the same account or would I need to buy it twice? Hopefully, it will be a one subscription fits all. We can only wait and see.
There’s been no official announcement on this yet, I could really see this being announced at this years E3 before being rolled out later in the year. Announcing it there would be a real kick in the teeth for Sony who is skipping the event completely.
If this does happen it’s another great thing for gamers. If you’d told me 5 years ago that we’d have Xbox games on a Nintendo system as well as cross-platform games like Rocket League, I would have laughed in your face and called you crazy. What a world we live in.
