CrossCode For Consoles Delayed To 2020, Switch Version Needs Further Optimization

On a recent developer blog, Radical Fish Games and Deck13 has released an update regarding CrossCode‘s status for consoles.

Publisher Deck13 has revealed that work for the game’s console port is still in progress and that the team had encountered some major challenges along the way. That being said, CrossCode for consoles will not be happening until 2020.

As for the Switch version, Deck13 said that they need to do some further optimization, but mentioned that those are just some minor stuff.

Read on below for the announcement and further details:

Now, a lot of you were most likely waiting for something else from CrossCode this years… those console versions!

As our Publisher Deck13 Spotlight is working on the port, here’s a short message from them about how things are going:

CrossCode for Consoles when?

Greetings everyball,

Michael here from Deck13. Publisher of CrossCode and the folks who are porting the game to consoles. And yes, we’ve been reading your tweets. Your posts on reddit. Your messages on Facebook. The outcalls on Discord. And we’re pretty sure there have been some Tik Tok videos, too. And as promised via Twitter, we’ll talk about the state of the console versions a bit. Also Switch, yes.

First of all: We’re still working on it and we’re making really good progress. That being said, we hoped for a 2019 release earlier this year. And – as you can see – this did not work out as intended. We underestimated the amount of work a bit. Or, in other words, it became… complicated. Especially the performance became a major challenge. Lea would say: Why?

That’s why: CrossCode is written in HTML5. And that means that there is tons of JavaScript. And live compiling it in a Chromium Browser is causing security issues on consoles and is forbidden on most platforms as hackers could attack the hardware through that. So we had to find a solution. Which is basically an interpreter which translates the code but locks it up in a cage. That also means: We had a performance bottleneck. As the code was read by the interpreter and then translated into something the console would understand and then read by the console. It is like watching a movie in a movie in a livestream. Yet: We have it under control now. We’re still ironing out the last issues, fixing some broken bosses and quests (which also have to be interpreted which means the interpreter must be able to read them etc.). But we’re getting there.

Sadly, Lea isn’t able to say the word where yet. But the question would be: Where are we at right now? We are currently focusing on testing the Xbox One version of CrossCode. If everything works out as intended, this should be the last major playthrough. We’re hunting the last performance killers, the last broken quests, the last weird behaving enemies. We are close to the first submission. We are already in the optional submissions. Yes, it runs (most times, but we’re working on that) at 60 FPS by now. And yes, it plays as fluid as on PC.

How? How can we not mention Switch. Well, we’re doing it now: We’re focusing on the Xbox right now for no specific reason but just to focus on one platform. Technically, with the way the interpreter is working, the step to other platforms is rather easy from there. Okay, for the Switch we need to do some further optimization, but that’s, compared to the rest, just some minor stuff. After that we’ll “just” need to pass the certifications.

When will CrossCode release on consoles? We’ll announce that once we have a fixed date set. Expect an announcement on a rather short notice here as we are, obviously, also in discussions with the platform holders about that. To shorten the wait, we’ve prepared a small trailer for now:

Thanks. Bye, Michael, Bye.

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And that’s all from our side as well!

You’ll most likely hear from us one more time this year. Until then!