Grounded and Pentiment are coming to Nintendo Switch as the first of four games moving away from Xbox exclusivity. Nintendo announced the release dates during its February Nintendo Direct presentation on Wednesday. Grounded is slated for its Nintendo Switch debut on April 16, while Pentiment will hit the console on Thursday.
Microsoft announced last week that four former Xbox exclusives were coming to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch — but it didn’t say which games. A report from The Verge suggested it was Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment, but it looks like Grounded is taking Hi-Fi Rush’s slot. Both Grounded and Pentiment are developed by Obsidian Entertainment, a studio acquired by Microsoft in 2018.
Grounded, a cooperative backyard survival game, was released in 2022 for Xbox consoles and Windows PC after an early access period that began in 2020. Pentiment was Obsidian’s next game released after Grounded; it’s both a historical role-playing game and a murder mystery. The story book-stylized game takes place during the 16th-century Holy Roman Empire, and it’s full of juicy drama and great fonts. The hope is that expanding these two games to new consoles like Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 gives the games new life and a new audience.
Microsoft is expected to bring Tango Gameworks and Bethesda Softworks’ Hi-Fi Rush and Rare’s Sea of Thieves to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5, too.
Elsewhere in the announcement, Nintendo showcased several new games coming to Nintendo Switch online today: Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, Blast Corps, R.C. Pro-Am, and Snake Rattle N Roll. Notable, these games are all from Rare, so they’re all technically Xbox games, too.
