It took more than a year for Hospital to make that leap, but Campus launched on all platforms simultaneously.
So, what gives? At the Gamescom conference in August 2024, I was able to ask two of the key developers what the story is here. Read on to find out!
Why isn’t Two Point Museum on Switch? What the developers have said
Speaking at Gamescom last summer, we asked Two Point Museum creative director Ben Huskins what the situation is regarding the lack of Nintendo Switch on the list of confirmed platforms.
Huskins replied: “I mean, we’re currently on Steam, Xbox Series and PlayStation 5. Next-gen consoles, obviously, you know?”
He added: “If we plan to bring the game to any other platforms in the future, we’ll let people know.”
When we mentioned that previous games in the franchise haven’t always launched on all the platforms at once, Huskins replied like so: “So, we did PC first [with Hospital], the console versions came later. We learned quite a lot from from doing the console version of Hospital, that we were then able to carry forward to Campus.
“And I think with Museum, you know, we tried to push the tech. The lighting is really cool, actually, so it’s kind of what you expect in a museum. It is about the ambience.”
At this point, executive producer Jo Koehler added a bit more information about the lighting in the game and how it builds on what was possible in the previous games.
“The windows work! Light comes through the window. Imagine that. And if you, like, close the bathroom without a window, it’ll be too dark. We’ve got wall lights, fire flames, and it does look incredible,” she explained.
“We really wanted the exhibits to, as we say, feel special and make people want to look after and care for them. We’ve added, like, little lights on all the exhibits so it really shows them off. It looks great.”
At this point, we asked if those lighting enhancements are an example of something that the team has been able to focus on more by just launching on PC and the latest consoles. Does that kind of open a few more doors?
Huskins replied: “That’s one area that we’ve pushed the tech, and the other thing is… because of the way the game is structured, where we’re kind of encouraging people to keep coming back to their museums, because people get quite attached to their museums after sinking hours into going out and collecting all of these things, and then looking after them, and then thinking carefully about the layout, and moving around and decorating it all…
“And we found that, whereas in the previous games, a lot of people get to three stars, and then they tended to move on […] whereas in Museum, we’ve tried to make it feel like, you know, ‘I’m not just leaving this place never to come back.’
“There’s always reasons to come back and expand the museum a bit more or tinker with the layout. You know, maybe you found some new locations on the map while you’re exploring, where you found new types of exhibits that you’ve not encountered before. You think, ‘All those fit really well with the ones I’ve got in my other museum.’
“And so, yeah, you can build your museums bigger and bigger, and just try and attract more and more guests, and more and more stuff going on. So there’s a lot going on in each Museum. There’s a there’s a lot more depth. We’re kind of really focused on the depth of each.”
So, there you have it.
The level of depth in the game, and the improvements in the lighting system, are two elements that were made possible for Two Point Museum by skipping Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Xbox One at launch.
Of course, the Nintendo Switch 2 is coming up this year, and neither developer ruled out other platforms further down the line during our interview. But for now, at least you know the reasons why the game hasn’t launched on Switch day one!
Check out more of our Gaming coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
