Despite the tepid gaming community’s response to RollerCoaster Tycoon World on PC — a game with an unusually negative Steam review score of 5/10 — Atari is trying to crowdfund a similar project for Nintendo Switch. Developed by Nvizzio Creations and published by Atari, the game has had sweeping post-launch issues, a fact that is burdening their current campaign to raise $1,070,000 for the Nintendo Switch launch of RollerCoaster Tycoon Switch. And in the wake of some of those concerns, Atari has answered some lingering questions.
First (and normally more important to gamers at large) is what happens if Atari doesn’t manage to meet their $1.07M funding goal? Unlike Kickstarter goals, StartEngine is investment focused — the funding goal listed does not necessarily need to be reached. In fact, the actual investment document notes that $1,070,000 is actually their maximum offering — they only required $10,000 to pass the minimum funding goals.
With this in mind, the game will be launching regardless if the stock of offering:
For the further avoidance of doubt, if we do not raise 100% of the funds, our majority stockholder intends to provide additional funding or credit in exchange for the balance of the Net Receipts not distributed to the Investors.
In other words, Atari Game Partners’ better-known parent company — Atari — will be footing the bill to fill in any gaps of funding along the way. In the past five days since launch, the campaign has raised $31,105 so it is well over the $10,000 minimum.
On top of that, there were the obvious concerns that developer Nvizzio would be simply porting over RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch or RollerCoaster Tycoon World (despite the blundered launch). However, Atari targeted those criticisms noting that the Nintendo Switch iteration is a “new game” and not a port — nor a free-to-okay game. As for the PC version’s woes and how that may impact the Nintendo Switch version:
Atari and Nvizzio Creations learned much from RollerCoaster Tycoon World; and the game, which was made by a separate team within the studio, is still undergoing continued development. Updates to RollerCoaster Tycoon World have been released and another update is coming soon.
Essentially, investors should be hoping that lessons were learned and that the PC version went to the B-team of Nvizzio Creations.
It should be no surprise that Atari is looking to bring RollerCoaster Tycoon to Nintendo Switch, given the continued interest in the development community as of late for Nintendo’s handheld platform. However, RollerCoaster Tycoon Switch may see some heavy competition — including Jurassic World Evolution which seems like it is an evolution of the key idea that the series targets.
RollerCoaster Tycoon Switch is slated to launch exclusively on Nintendo Switch in 2018.