On the heels of Rise of the Ronin's PC launch, its director says there's a "significant" amount of Japanese Switch gamers: "I am closely watching how this will change with the release of Switch 2"

Rise of the Ronin director Fumihiko Yasuda is carefully watching the amount of Japanese gamers who prefer to play games on Nintendo Switch - and whether that's going to change with the release of the Switch 2.

Yasuda's comments are noteworthy in the wake of Rise of the Ronin's PC launch, which is currently being skewered on Steam due to apparent performance and optimization issues primarily. With that in mind, a Rise of the Ronin Switch port seems like a disastrous proposition, but it does sound like Yasuda and co. are at least weighing the audience they could reach on future Nintendo hardware.

"In terms of consoles, there has been a long-standing situation in Japan where there is a significant number of Switch players, and I am closely watching how this will change with the release of Switch 2," Yasuda told RPG Site.

Yasuda also echoed what Monster Hunter lead producer Ryozo Tsujimoto recently said about the growing number of PC gamers in Japan.

"For games like the ones we create, there are many PS5 players, but I also feel that the number of PC players has significantly increased in Japan over the past few years."

To be clear, there really isn't anything we can explicitly infer from Yasuda's words here. Team Ninja has released games on Switch in the past and it'll probably continue to do that, but it is interesting that Yasuda seems to be particularly keen on the upcoming Switch 2 market. Depending on how powerful the console ends up being, it's possible it'll be able to support big AAA open-world games day and date with their PlayStation, Xbox, and PC counterparts. We'll have to wait for the April Switch 2 Direct to learn more.

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