Released as a Nintendo Switch launch title, 1-2-Switch was a party game that emphasized local multiplayer and motion controls, hearkening back to the early days of the massively-successful Nintendo Wii console. Yet, met with a mediocre critical response and drastically overshadowed by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild—the only other day-one Nintendo Switch release—the title went down as a fairly forgettable outing. That said, reportedly selling just under three-and-a-half million copies by late 2020, a sequel to 1-2-Switch didn’t seem out of the question. In fact, one is said to be in the very late stages of development, but the publisher can’t work out some of the game's kinks.As reported by Fanbyte News Editor Imran Khan, a new iteration of the 2017 party game titled Everybody’s 1-2-Switch was, at one point, primed for release, but Nintendo’s faith in the project was shaken by particularly negative playtesting results. Said to be all sorts of bland, banal, and boring, it seems as if Everybody’s 1-2-Switch, rather than correcting the faults of the original 1-2-Switch title, doubled down on them. The concept sounds promising; supposedly inspired by the minigame menagerie that is the Jackbox Party Pack series, Everybody’s 1-2-Switch would have dropped the one-on-one focus of the first title, expanding things to incorporate massive lobbies of up to one hundred players. Adopting a game show-like format, matches would be strung together by a bipedal equine nicknamed “Horse,” and the game would take advantage of smartphone connectivity to allow for greater gameplay variety. Minigames included experiences that would make use of the Nintendo Switch joy-con motion controls like musical chairs and spin the bottle, while games like bingo would employ players’ mobile devices.
Yet, while the Jackbox Party Pack series is set to receive a ninth installment later this year, 1-2-Switch may not have that same longevity. The chief concern here seems to be the minigames on offer; each new Jackbox Party Pack outing includes innovative, quirky experiences that can’t be found elsewhere, whereas Nintendo’s interpretation doesn’t appear to have been quite as creative. Additionally, given that many of the games in the Jackbox series are already on the Nintendo Switch, an inferior competitor releasing at full price may not have gone over well.
It’s suggested that Nintendo may have considered charging less than full price for Everybody’s 1-2-Switch or bundling it with the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion pass just as it did with the Animal Crossing: New Horizons DLC. Though it may not have been scrapped entirely, it’s hard to know if this supposed sequel will ever receive an actual release.
Source: Fanbyte