Cult-favorite Xenoblade Chronicles X has been trapped on Wii U for nearly a decade. No longer. The open-world sci-fi RPG is getting a Switch port at long last early next year. It could be the final game to make that jump before Nintendo finally reveals the Switch 2.
The surprise October announcement comes as all eyes are on the lookout for any sign of the Switch’s successor. But it feels fitting that Xenoblade Chronicles X, a beloved but mostly overlooked game from 2015, will end up being part of the current console’s end-of-life send-off. Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition arrives on March 20, 2025, with enhanced visuals and new story beats.
Here’s the trailer:
Xenoblade Chronicles X is a futuristic game about trying to rebuild humanity on a distant and hostile planet called Mira. The large-scale world is full of giant monsters to fight, mechs to customize and ride, and lots of MMO-style fetch quests and resource harvesting. There’s also multiplayer-specific missions and Global Nemesis Battles in addition to all of the existing character affinities and skill trees to manage.
It’s Monolith Soft’s immediate follow-up to Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii, and had a bit more of the mech-infused flavor of studio cofounder Tetsuya Takahashi’s previous RPG series, Xenogears and Xenosaga. It’s also precisely the sort of game that would benefit from some Definitive Edition cleanup, and possibly even the added horsepower of a Switch 2 whenever it finally arrives.
In the meantime, it’s exciting to see the entire Xenoblade series up to this point in one place. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and its beefy expansion were excellent, and while I can’t wait to see what Monolith Soft does next, an upgrade port of Xenoblade Chronicles X is the perfect thing to tide fans over unit its next project is officially announced.
