Kingdom Hearts III has been in the works for a while, having had its development confirmed all the way back in 2013, but Square Enix mustered a sneak peek of the title this weekend at Disney"s D23 Expo. It also appeared that players will get the opportunity to play in the Toy Story world with characters such as Woody and Buzz Lightyear making appearances in the game.
While Square Enix remained cagey with respect to a specific release date, it did affirm that Kingdom Hearts III would be released sometime in 2018 for both Xbox One and PlayStation 4. However, when asked about a potential appearance on Nintendo Switch, game director Tetsuya Nomura entertained the possibility and said:
"The Nintendo Switch is definitely a very interesting piece of hardware, but if we lightly say, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll be on the Nintendo Switch,’ I’m sure people will come back and say, ‘But what about the PS4 and Xbox One? We want them out first. Don’t focus on other platforms.
So for now, we want to focus on what platforms we’ve already announced we’re going to be releasing Kingdom Hearts 3 on. And so after, perhaps, maybe we can start thinking about other possibilities."
This could, theoretically, mean that Nintendo Switch fans could end up waiting until 2019 for the game to arrive should it not be released on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 until late in 2018. However, Square Enix could simply decide not to bring the title to the Switch if it foresaw difficulties in porting the game, such as the hybrid console not having enough buttons as cited by Cliff Bleszinski, developer of Lawbreakers during the course of the last week.
Source: IGN via Nintendo Life | Image via Kingdom Hearts (YouTube)