UPDATE - Nintendo Begins Distributing Software Kit for New NX Platform

[midrange]

teigaga said:

midrange said:
Those dev kits are coming in too late for a 2016 release. Sure the ps4 ones came months before, but if people remember, the only third party the ps4 had on launch were ports. It's biggest releases (killzone, infamous) were all first party. The NX can't afford to have a delayed launch, otherwise it will fail to take momentum from the ps4 and will enter the same fate as the wii u

Developers begin developement on PC before they move it to dev kits. Porting a game doesn't take over a year (of course it depends on the size of the team porting). PS4 lacked third party exclusives at launch because sony didn't buy any.

The only AAA third party developers making  exclusives for the NX  will be developers Nintendo has signed deals with, they likely would have recieved dev kits before general circulation.  More importantly though Nintendo will have likely snatched exclusivity of games already in development if they were to go for exclusives (Titanfall, TombRaider etc), not simply having games built from scratch. On top of that there is no reason to expect frequent third party exclusives, only Indies and Japanese devs with little audience in the west will make exclusives without first accepting a fat pay check.

You don't need to buy all of your partnerships/exclusive offers. Both zombiu and rayman legends were supposed to be wii u launch exclusives courtesy of Ubisoft. The same thing could have happened if Nintendo sent out dev kits (too all devs) earlier, and not rely on simple ports. The ps4 had a slow launch, but that was offset by poor competition and the promise of a great future. The NX is facing tough competition, and given the performance of the wii u, does not have a gauranteed future.

There is only so much you can do on pc without having the specs of a console. Especially if you want to create custom engines (which work perfectly for games that are not ports) for max optimization.