Koji Igarashi has revealed that sales for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night exceeded his expectations for the Nintendo Switch. In a recent interview with Famitsu, Igarashi was speaking about the overall performance of the game and which platform saw the most sales, in which the Switch decisively came out on top.

Igarashi described how this came as a surprise, because, “The game launched one week later on Switch than on other consoles, and I figured fans wouldn’t be able to wait the extra week for the Switch version, so that was unexpected.” This should come as a surprise to most people, because when it first launched on the Switch, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night had some major issues compared to other platforms.

When the Switch version launched, players were quick to point out the vast visual differences between that platform and both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions. The differences were like night and day, with comments often repeating that the Switch version looked like an early beta rather than a polished finish seen on platforms released a week earlier.

In addition to the visual difference, the Switch version had a 30 FPS cap, but struggled significantly in several areas, making performance and combat inconsistent when it mattered most. Given how poorly the game launched on the Switch, it is quite surprising to see that sales were so strong there relative to other platforms.

One reason for the strong support on that platform might have to do with the passion shown by Igarashi prior to and after the release of the game. Once these concerns were made known, the game’s main Twitter account posted a message vowing to correct the issues faced by Switch users to create an experience that is comparable regardless of platform. Once patch 1.01 released, many problems were corrected, and since then the game has reached a high level of quality that is nearly indistinguishable from other platforms.

Another reason for the strong sales on the Switch might be attributed to the fan base of players who follow Igarashi’s work from his days working on Castlevania titles in the past, many of which were played on Nintendo handheld consoles. If anything, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was a spiritual successor to Igarashi’s previous work, and that would make the Switch the best platform to play on to recreate the experiences of the past.

Source: gonintendo.com

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