Panic Button is Building Off Its Acclaimed Switch Ports to Make Its Own Original Games

The Nintendo Switch has been extremely good to Panic Button. The studio's acclaimed work porting games to Switch has elevated its profile and even earned it something of a fanbase—a rarity for contract studios. And its success has general manager Adam Creighton dreaming big.

"We'll be doing both contract work and striking out on our own," Creighton tells USgamer. "We enjoy the high-profile, high-quality content we're able to do. You'll see a lot more of that in some surprising ways across multiple platforms. But we are also building our own internal properties. And there may be some things we create that are with very well-known intellectual properties."

Asked whether Panic Button will be prioritizing the Switch with its original projects, Creighton says, "Nintendo Switch is a fantastic device for us, and we have expertise that very few studios have. So there's a lot that makes sense for us to do, and we're very in demand for extremely high-profile projects. But we're also known for our high-end development work, our 4K work things like Xbox One X and PS4 Pro—we did the 4K update for Rocket League, for example—so there are things there that people are very excited about us doing. So you'll be seeing us doing a lot of contract work on multiple platforms, but also some new original properties... sometime."

The effort to build original properties is on top of Panic Button's many other projects. In addition to its work on Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, Panic Button recently published a PlayStation VR game called To the Top. It's a busy time for the Austin-based studio.

Panic Button was originally founded in 2007, where it contributed to development of games like Kinect Star Wars and Ms. Splosion Man. Creighton joined the studio in 2011 as a GM and co-owner and re-oriented it toward "making good games with good people." Panic Button has subsequently become known as a well-respected port specialist, having successfully translated Doom and Rocket League to Nintendo Switch.

With the development of original games, though, it appears that Panic Button is content with just being a high-end tech studio. If its own games are as strong as its ports, we may well soon be speaking of Panic Button in the same breath as other famous third-party studios.

Wolfenstein 2 will be out on Nintendo Switch on June 29, and will include motion controls. You can find all of our E3 2018 coverage here.

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