Nintendo had a lot of great news for fans during its digital presentation at the recently held 2017 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) event last week. However, one of the most exciting announcements was the upcoming port of Psyonix’ top-rated vehicular soccer video game, “Rocket League,” for the Nintendo Switch.

As a cherry on top, Nintendo also revealed that the game would be cross-platform compatible with the Xbox One and the Windows PC via Steam.

Banking on its popularity

“Rocket League” is currently one of the most popular competitive games available today.

The game has over 30 million active players, and it is heavyweight in the competitive eSports arena. Nintendo is, of course, aware of this fact, which is why it was a no-brainer decision for the company to acquire a port of the game for their recently released gaming console.

According to Nintendo, they actually reached out to Psyonix even before the Nintendo Switch was launched. The company then reached out to the developer once again late last year to finally get a port for their console developed.

Port challenges

The development team at Psyonix were given the development kit for the Switch when Nintendo approached them for the second time. However, the developer only began to work on the port a few months ago.

While “Rocket League” may not be a graphically intensive title when compared to other games, the game’s physics engine does require a certain amount of power. The engine is responsible for rendering and predicting the physics within the game, specifically the movement of the large ball that players and pushing around.

Due to the limitations of the Nintendo Switch, Psyonix apparently had to lower the resolution for the port to 720p in order to ensure that the game runs smoothly on the console.

The ported game will likely look great when played in tablet/portable mode, but there might be some graininess to the game when it is played in full console mode with large resolution television sets.

Sony not playing ball

The original game was released for the PlayStation 4 and Windows PC back in July 2015.

The game was later ported for the Xbox One, OS X, and Linux a year later. Nintendo announced that the Switch version will be cross-network compatible with other platforms, but the PlayStation 4 version will unfortunately not be one of them. Sony apparently was a no-go with the idea, which means that Switch owners will have to settle for playing with Xbox One and Steam players in online matches.

“Rocket League” will be released for the Nintendo Switch sometime during the holiday season later in the year.