Cities: Skylines 2 Announced for Switch 2 as Original Game's Console Ports Remain Missing

Paradox Interactive dropped a surprise during Nintendo's Switch 2 reveal event: Cities: Skylines 2 is confirmed for the upcoming console. The news should excite city-building fans eager to zone residential districts on the go, but it arrives with a conspicuous asterisk. The original Cities: Skylines, a modern genre staple that has sold millions on PC, still lacks PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S native ports despite years of player requests and vague promises from the publisher.

The timing creates an awkward dynamic for Paradox and developer Colossal Order. Console players who bought into the franchise on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One have watched the PC version receive expansions, updates, and now a full sequel announcement — all while their platforms run the game via backward compatibility at best. The Switch 2 reveal for the sequel suggests Paradox is prioritizing Nintendo's new hardware over fulfilling the current-gen port commitments for the first game. For a publisher that has historically supported multiple platforms, the silence on those ports is becoming difficult to ignore.

Here's a thinking process:

During Nintendo's Switch 2 presentation, Paradox confirmed that Cities: Skylines 2 will launch on the new hybrid console. The publisher did not provide a specific release date for the Switch 2 version, nor did it clarify whether the port will launch simultaneously with other platforms or arrive later. The original Cities: Skylines 2 released on PC in October 2023 to a mixed reception, with players citing performance issues and missing features compared to its predecessor. Console versions for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S were announced alongside the PC launch but have faced repeated delays.

Colossal Order, the Finnish studio that built the series, hasn’t announced any specifics about the Switch 2 port’s performance goals, feature parity, or how controls will be tweaked. The original Cities: Skylines landed on the first Switch around 2018, about three years after its PC release, and that version had to sacrifice a lot to keep up with the handheld’s limits. With Switch 2’s upgraded hardware, a closer match to the desktop build seems plausible, yet the studio still hasn’t posted any technical data or gameplay clips on the new console.

Here's a thinking process:

While the sequel secures a Switch 2 announcement, the original Cities: Skylines remains absent from PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in native form. Paradox and Colossal Order have acknowledged the demand for current-gen versions over the years, with community managers occasionally stating the ports were "in development" or "being investigated." But no concrete timeline, gameplay footage, or technical details have ever materialized. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions, released in 2017, continue to run via backward compatibility on current hardware — functional but lacking the performance upgrades and quality-of-life improvements a native port would provide.

This silence stands in contrast to Paradox's typical multi-platform strategy. The publisher has brought titles like Stellaris, Crusader Kings III, and Surviving Mars to consoles with varying degrees of success. The Cities: Skylines franchise represents one of their biggest commercial successes, making the lack of current-gen support for the original game a notable gap. Players on Reddit and the Paradox forums have repeatedly asked for updates, only to receive generic responses or no response at all.

Here's a thinking process:

The Switch 2 announcement for Cities: Skylines 2 signals that Paradox sees Nintendo's next platform as a priority for the franchise's future. The original game's Switch port, despite its compromises, found an audience — portable city-building proved a genuine draw. Securing a day-one or near-day-one presence on Switch 2 suggests Paradox wants to capture that audience again, potentially with a version that doesn't require the same heavy compromises.

For PlayStation and Xbox players, the message is less encouraging. The original game's current-gen ports have effectively been deprioritized in favor of the sequel's multi-platform rollout. If Colossal Order's resources are focused on optimizing Cities: Skylines 2 for Switch 2, PC, and eventually PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, the first game's native current-gen versions may never arrive. That leaves console owners in a strange position: the franchise's flagship title on their platform remains a last-gen release running in compatibility mode, while the sequel prepares to launch on newer Nintendo hardware.

The situation reflects a broader tension in cross-platform development: studios with limited resources must choose where to allocate optimization effort. Colossal Order is a relatively small team for a simulation of this complexity, and the PC version of Cities: Skylines 2 still receives regular patches addressing performance and stability. Adding Switch 2 to the target platform list increases the engineering burden, potentially at the expense of the original game's overdue current-gen ports. For now, console players on Sony and Microsoft hardware wait — while Nintendo's next platform gets a seat at the table for the sequel.