Why Among Us Came to Switch Before Xbox & PlayStation

Among Us is now on the Switch, and it’s coming soon to Xbox (and then maybe – maybe – it might get a PlayStation port, that’s not confirmed).

So why the Switch first? Well, for one thing, the Switch is designed to make the process of porting Unity games as easy as possible, and that’s really helpful for a game that’s a broken as Among Us.
Developer InnerSloth has admitted that Among Us is a buggy nightmare, a real challenge to actually develop for, as it’s grown bit by bit from a small mobile game into an online game that it was never meant to be.

We’re not saying that the Switch has some kind of magic easy import button for Unity, or that it’s easier to port to Switch than to Xbox or PlayStation, but it is important to note that Nintendo deliberately set out to make the Switch more indie-friendly than the company’s previous hardware.

The REAL benefit for InnerSloth is the fact that the Switch doesn’t support voice chat. Because, hey, Among Us doesn’t have voice chat anyway! What a perfect combination!

So while a lot of extra work is going on behind the scenes to give Among Us a chat function that will work on Xbox and PlayStation, InnerSloth can take advantage of the fact that the Switch’s online functionality is still very comms-phobic.

Hey, if a limitation is what gets you a hit indie game like Among Us, then maybe it’s not really a limitation at all!