Nintendohas announced thatXenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is coming to Switch in March 2025. It didn’t make the reveal during a Direct Presentation or anything fancy, it just sent out a random email and dropped a trailer on a Tuesday afternoon to say that one of theWii U’s most beloved games is finally leaving console purgatory. I would have liked at least a tiny bit of fanfare, but the fact we’re getting this remaster at all feels like a miracle.
Originally released for Wii U in 2015 and developed by Monolith Soft, Xenoblade Chronicles X has amassed a reputation for being vast, complicated, and ambitious. For a long time, it felt like it might be impossible to port considering it dwarfs the scale of its series’ siblings, even later entries Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and 3.
Xenoblade Chronicles X Was A Swansong For Wii U
But it was also a niche JRPG on a platform that very few people owned, and thus it never set the world on fire in terms of sales despite its critical acclaim. All of these circumstances put it into a state of limbo, one where it seemingly would never be ported, remastered, or available outside its native hardware ever again. Yet here we are, with a confirmed release date out of nowhere.
The Definitive Edition will include enhanced visuals - which appear in line with the character models and environments found in the definitive edition of the original game - along with a few enhanced story elements. What exactly this narrative expansion might entail is unclear, but there is a chance it could be a new episode acting as a conclusion to the main game or even elements from the Japanese release that were never localised. We’ll likely learn more in the coming months, as the reveal trailer was incredibly brief, leaving us with plenty of questions.
But for those who aren’t in the know, what exactly is Xenoblade Chronicles X? While it has ties to the previous entry and plenty of references to sister series Xenogears, it’s otherwise a standalone entry in which humanity relocates to the planet of Mira after Earth is destroyed.
Shortly after that, it founds the city of New Los Angeles, a sprawling metropolis that acts as one of the game’s central hubs. But instead of playing as a named protagonist, you create your own avatar before embarking on an epic adventure. It’s very different, and feels inspired by MMO titles as much as it does beloved JRPGs. It has a complicated battle system and a collection of dense gameplay mechanics designed around the Wii U gamepad, which has me curious about exactly how the port will approach things.
What Else Is There Left To Port After Xenoblade Chronicles X?
X is a true epic that never holds back, and I’ll never forget the thrill of spending 30+ hours exploring Mira on my own two feet only to finally earn the right to pilot a Skell - big transforming mechs that recontexualise how you view the open world. You are no longer running up mountains or spending hours running back and forth to complete quests, but bursting into air as you pilot a giant robot that can see and do anything. It’s liberating, and to this day there is nothing quite like it. So long as that experience remains untouched, I’ll be there on day one, and I can’t wait for a whole new audience to be overwhelmed by it.
But with the arrival of Xenoblade Chronicles X, it is yet another nail in the coffin of the Wii U. Now, aside from the awful Devil’s Third, the only worthwhile exclusives yet to be ported are Nintendo Land, which likely won’t because it’s a technical showcase for the platform, along with Twilight Princess and Wind Waker HD. I can picture those classics coming as either an individual product or a twin pack or sorts, but after that, the Wii U will finally be fully obsolete. Online servers have already been switched off, so unless you’re keeping one to house your Virtual Console titles, the Switch is set to make the Wii U completely redundant.
Nintendo going so ham on porting Wii U games made perfect sense considering how badly it performed, and has developed into a trend over the past console generation as its entire library is shifted over to the Switch. The Wii U was not a mainstream console, and that much is obvious in the sales numbers of titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which remains the best-selling game on the Switch, despite originating on the earlier console.
I’d somehow grown fond of this cadence, waiting with anxious excitement to see what game would be up next. But now that Xenoblade Chronicles X has done the impossible, this little game has come to an end. I’ll miss it, yet I also can’t wait to finally have this JRPG classic back in my hands.
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