Work x Work dev team explains what made them "dead-set" on bringing the game to Switch

Work x Work actually started its development process 3 years ago, and the plan was to bring it to mobile phones. If that was the case, how in the world did it end up jumping to Switch? In a Famitsu interview (translation via NintendoEverything) with Nobuyuki Inoue, Nobuhiro Imagawa (graphics), Tsukasa Masuko (sound), Takahiro Yamane (development director), and Takuya Yamanaka (producer), we find out why.

Masuko: I had gotten to know Inoue-san through working on Brownie Brown’s Magical Vacation. After seeing the proposal, I immediately knew it’d be something along the same lines as the Hanjuku Hero games; with that in mind, I felt that working on the sound design would be pretty fun. At the time, I knew Imagawa-san was working on the concept art – in fact, I had confidence in all members of the team, so I knew the project would be worthwhile. However, I’d eventually approach Yamanaka-san with a proposal to move development from smartphones to the Nintendo Switch – he was a bit surprised with how big the game would become scale-wise. (wry laughter)

Yamanaka: He basically said, “I’ll make it a console game, just leave it to me – if that’s okay with you.” To that end, character and scenario-wise, the scope of the game had just gotten much bigger! With respect to the hardware, we were pretty excited to have the game on the Switch; with the game’s cute aesthetic and atmosphere – particularly befitting of handheld mode – it seemed as if it were a perfect match. We were pretty dead-set on developing Work x Work for the Switch at that point!