Other games that started on Newgrounds have made it to Nintendo systems like the Wii and Switch, so why shouldn't Friday Night Funkin' do the same?

Friday Night Funkin now has over ten different songs with three separate difficulties across six different stages, finally cementing itself as a fully-fledged free-to-play experience and one that should be brought to the Nintendo Switch next. Even though it’s got a very small development team and doesn’t provide a “console-like” experience, many players have been asking for a Nintendo Switch port due to the game’s rising popularity. However, there are others who wonder if it’s possible for the game to be published or even ported to the Switch given its free-to-play strategy and its Newgrounds-based roots.

The game releasing in association with Newgrounds makes the project interesting because a lot of independent games were born on the site and rose to stardom. Edmund McMillen’s original Meat Boy was released on the site and Tom Fulp, the founder of Newgrounds, still develops with a small team that has created classics like Castle Crashers and Pit People. Now that smaller publishers can list their games through the eShop, it’s much easier for these developers to get games on the Nintendo Switch, especially with Newgrounds backing them.

Many fans may know that Friday Night Funkin is free, but this does not mean that the game can’t come to console. Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Rocket League are all free-to-play on Nintendo Switch and still have a presence on the eShop. Given the popularity of the game and the legacy of independent Newgrounds ports, there are reasons to believe that Friday Night Funkin may make it to the Nintendo Switch.

Other Flash Legacy Games Mean FNF Is A Perfect Fit For Switch

One of the most interesting releases for the early years of the Nintendo GameCube was a port of the game Alien Hominid. This game, released in 2004, was created by Dan Paladin and Tom Fulp, two prolific flash artists at the time. The game is available for multiple separate consoles today, such as the Xbox 360, but in the age of the Game Boy Advance and PlayStation, it was hard to find independent developers who had enough support and experience to port their games to major consoles. The positive reception of Alien Hominid on GameCube eventually opened the floodgates to more indie games to make it to the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo Switch.

Fulp would eventually go on to found Newgrounds, a website that encouraged the use of the now-preserved Flash engine as a game design and animation tool for aspiring independent artists. This is the platform that Friday Night Funkin is currently available on and many developers that started there have ported their games to Switch (such as in the case of VVVVVV), or have gone on to create classics (like The Binding of Isaac). Even today Nintendo holds showcases of independent developers. Return of the Obra Dinn and Disco Elysium got big reveals in Nintendo's recent Directs, so Nintendo is aware that smaller titles can still bring people to its console.

The largest thing holding Friday Night Funkin back from a console release is that the engine it's built on, HaxeFlixel, does not currently support consoles. The source code is available for free on the game’s itch.io page, but that wouldn’t help without real support from the developers themselves. The creator of the game, ninja_muffin99, has said on Twitter that a port of Friday Night Funkin is "possible", and also that while they have the resources to port, it would just be about which console manufacturer they feel they can work with. Nintendo previously rejected muffin's initial pitch to put FNF on the Switch eShop, but a lot of time has passed since then and the game's popularity continues to grow. There's always a chance that Nintendo could revisit the pitch and bring FNF to the Switch in light of that, especially since it's brought multiple indie titles to the eShop within the last year.

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Source: ninja_muffin99 on Twitter