Steep’s Nintendo Switch version cancelled by Ubisoft

Ubisoft has confirmed the cancellation of a Switch version of extreme sports title Steep, with the long-awaited port having disappeared from the public eye quite a while back.

The news came via a tweet from the official Steep account in response to a question, with the respondee stating: “We are wholly dedicated to supporting the live game, and made the decision to stop Steep development on the Nintendo Switch platform to focus on bringing new live content and challenges to Steep players instead.

“We’ll have more exciting news to share soon.”

While the news does come as a blow to anyone waiting for Steep on Nintendo Switch, it has been around 20 months since the original game’s release back in December of 2016, and almost as long since the Nintendo version was announced. It seems Ubisoft’s decision to focus on the Road to the Olympics add-on for existing versions took a lot of focus off the Switch port, and ultimately the decision was made to not bother at all.

What is surprising is that Ubisoft has decided to avoid the Switch – one of the most successful current gen formats and the only format that saw growth in its sales in the US recently. It may be a decision fuelled in part because the Switch only makes up five per cent of Ubisoft’s total net bookings for the past quarter, but with that section of the company’s earning avenues growing, we wouldn’t expect Ubi to steer clear of the Switch much.

No, it just feels like this was a case of an avalanche of other releases knocking the competitive snow-‘em-up down the pecking order.