Yooka-Laylee finally has a release date for Nintendo Switch

It’s been a good year for the return of childhood favourites, Banjo-Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot, etc and now Nintendo Switch gamers will have their day as Yooka-Laylee makes its way to the Switch console.

Whilst the game has already made its valiant return via PC, PlayStation4 and Xbox earlier in the year back in April, Nintendo Switch players and fans of the game were left with only a vague announcement back in February that Yooka-Laylee would be coming to the Switch sometime this year. Well now after months and months of waiting we finally have a date of December 14th! This date puts it perfectly into the gift giving bracket of the year and I have to say that the game’s pick up and play style is perfectly suited to the Switch and its portability.

This might seem like the perfect time to release Yooka-Laylee to some but others are asking why the delay… Eurogamer spoke to Playtonic director Gavin Price and asked him that exact question.

“It’s a new platform where we’re using a middleware engine, so it adds another link to the chain – especially when we’re the first game of this scale on this engine on this platform,” Price said. “There’s been lots of stuff to learn, especially when you’ve made decisions already for other versions of the game which you have to unbuild and then rebuild. We wanted it to be fantastic and to have achieved a really high optimisation level.”

“We’ve had really great support from Unity and Nintendo – and folks at Team 17 – from people on the engine side of things to help us understand what’s going on. They’ve put a lot of work and effort into the engine side of things where maybe they didn’t even realise there was a problem, until someone comes along with a game like this.”

This will be the most comprehensive version of the game yet and includes a few Nintendo Switch exclusives alongside various updates, so there’s never been a better time to pick up Yooka-Laylee or be a Switch owner.