On October 28, 2022, it will already be that far and Factorio will be released for the Nintendo Switch. The implementation for the Nintendo branch took a good 1.5 years according to the developer.
There will be no content compromises on the Switch. The entire content and gameplay will be exactly the same as on the other platforms. The only thing you have to do without is mod support. Multiplayer will also be available and allow cross-platform play. However, an Nintendo Online subscription will be required for online play. This is required for all online games on Nintendo. The LAN mode, however, will be playable without such a subscription.
Save states are compatible between the different platforms. There will be no separate function to transfer save states. However, multiplayer mode save states will be directly transferable.
There will be no significant performance compromises. The bottleneck will of course be the performance of the Nintendo Switch. But according to the developer, there should be between 30 and 60 FPS. It doesn't matter whether you play in TV mode or handheld mode.
60 UPS (updates per second) are recommended to allow normal gameplay. In "mega-bases" the UPS rate can also drop considerably. What exactly this means will probably only be known at the release.
Game control with controller
Since Factorio has only been played with keyboard and mouse so far, the developer had to come up with something here. According to him, the entire game can be played with a Joy-Con controller, but in some aspects you are a little slower. After a little getting used to it, it should still be very fluid and intuitive.
Steam Deck and PC controller
In the course of the announcement, the developer immediately answered the question of whether support for Steam Deck and other controllers on the PC is planned. This is already planned, but the developer will first wait for the feedback of the Nintendo players and optimize the controls there.
A request from the developer
The developer also made a request to the community. The quality standard that Nintendo has for releases on one of the consoles is very high. A release with an incomplete translation of all the game's texts is therefore absolutely necessary. Via the Crowdin platform, everyone can help with the translation of the game.
Help with the translation into Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese is particularly needed.
