I was once a huge fan of Sid Meier’s Civilization. I was introduced to it by a cousin who was obsessed with the third entry, and he got me into it. It consumed me for a period until I truly couldn’t put more time into it. While I stopped enjoying it, others didn’t, and the franchise has grown to great heights, especially after the sixth entry that overhauled many of the game’s systems. Fast forward to now, and Civilization VII is highly anticipated. Yet, you may have noticed that things are a bit different with this one this time around, including cross-platform saves and it having a simultaneous release on both PC and console.
What caused that change? The Nintendo Switch! No, really, I mean it. Executive producer Dennis Shirk was doing a chat with Gamesindustry.biz and revealed that when they ported Civ VI to the Switch, it had a much bigger impact on the player base than anticipated:
“We weren’t sure when [the game] first came out on Switch. We were like: ‘Are people going to play it for that long on a handheld?’ And the answer was yes, yes they will. We hadn’t expected Switch to be a huge thing. But suddenly, it became a really huge thing. We found that a lot of our PC players were getting the game on Switch because they could take their game with them. And so with [Civilization VII], you can transfer your save game and keep playing. It’s compelling.”
I agree, and it’ll be interesting to see how the game does on Switch (and potentially the Switch 2!) compared to PC sales and other consoles.
