UFL, a free-to-play competitive football game developed by Strikerz, has already been out on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S since December 5, 2024, with a PC version soon to be released. CEO Eugene Nashilov says that while there are plans for a Nintendo Switch 2 version, Strikerz has yet to receive the dev kits they requested months prior.
According to a behind-the-scenes UFL presentation attended by Football Gaming Zone (as reported by Insider Gaming), Nashilov claimed that Strikerz is just one of many free-to-play game studios around the world that Nintendo has been putting off providing Switch 2 development kits to. Strikerz’s request for Switch 2 dev kits goes as far back as March 2025, two months after the console was officially announced.
The Switch 2 version is not yet in development, but it will be. As of right now, Nintendo is not actively giving development kits to free-to-play developers. That’s a global trend, and we’re a part of that. Once we have our hands on the new device and we start working with it, then we will most likely be making a Switch 2 port.
On a related note, many third-party studios that attended Gamescom 2025 confirmed that they weren’t able to get Switch 2 dev kits, as reported by Digital Foundry. Instead, they were told by Nintendo to develop their titles for the Switch, whereupon they would be playable on the Switch 2 via backwards compatibility. Given the latter information, it is questionable whether Nintendo’s reluctance to provide dev kits is based on titles being free-to-play, but rather a result of more large-scale guidelines.
For instance, Wccftech has reported that Nintendo is becoming pickier about only approving games that will bring value to the platform and make use of the Switch 2’s superior capabilities. As such, simple ports (even those published by existing partners), are not automatically approved and do not guarantee access to a dev kit. These kinds of factors could also be play a role in UFL’s delay and other similar cases, although the details remain unclear.
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Nintendo loves them Ls
Yeah, if a game isn’t going to make use of the Switch 2 hardware, why should they develop for it? Waste of a dev kit. Plus the game would be playable on both systems, versus one. Plus I refuse to buy a Switch 2 until I can own a physical game, and not rent a digital version at full price.
Well thankfully, only Nintendo exclusive games are and will be physical. The game key-card thing is only up to third party developers. But Nintendo could have upped their carts to 100gb in capacity and they wouldn’t be expensive. I mean, they shouldn’t be costly if they went for that route instead, right? Then again, Nintendo gotta be Nintendo…