Can we agree Nintendo should go third party, now?

[greenmedic88]

It wouldn't hurt Nintendo to push games of their many IPs on other platforms, assuming they can maintain the same level of quality assurance their games are known for.

I suspect the OP is more of a plea for Nintendo to release current versions of its premiere titles published for Nintendo's own hardware platforms in parallel with PC versions, possibly Playstation and Xbox versions, depending upon whatever platform the OP prefers.

These kinds of arguments and bargaining smack of the same type of claims the Nintendo super fans made back when the Wii ruled the hardware charts. In their minds, third party developers were obligated to lead develop or port all their games for the Wii or go out of business/do a disservice to their share holders because the hardware installed base and sales rates for the Wii were exploding. The Wii was envisioned in their minds as a toaster oven or microwave that every household would eventually have.

In the end, no.

While Nintendo certainly could develop generic ports of their games that run on other platforms, they have made a point since the Wii of incorporating aspects of their hardware platforms into the games themselves, at times more effectively than others.

Nintendo played heavily with the dual screen format originally with the DS, then the 3DS and then less effectively with the Wii U, depending upon individual opinion. Independent screen was great for households and the controller doubled as a useful TV remote, but clearly these features didn't translate into enviable sales.

The 3D effect was all but just a visual experiment that was proven to have little to no bearing on actual game play (2DS confirmed this), but legitimate attempts were made to add a new dimension of play into the games for those who didn't get cross-eyed staring at stereoscopic images.

The Wii introduced motion control that was incorporated into most of Nintendo's games that wouldn't always translate effectively into generic input devices, even while it's still fair to say that much of the motion control incorporated into many games was substituting controller shaking for wild button mashing. Many of the games on the other hand, were not of the flail control variety.

Nintendo hasn't demonstrated all of the ways in which the hardware of the Switch can be incorporated into their own games (only hinted at in demo reels), but it would be an underassessment to state that the Switch is a generic tablet with removable motion control input devices standard that could easily be done on say an Nvidia Shield or iPad.

So traditional style games could be ported to PC (used as a generic stand in for Not Nintendo Hardware), but it's safe to say that the next iteration of Nintendo games will be tailored for what the Switch brings to the table. These additions would be lost in the ports.

Alternately, Nintendo could develop generic style traditional input versions of their games for PC or mobile (they have already licensed out mobiles Nintendo games) that weren't the same games published for the Switch, but this would likely be done through licensing their IPs to be developed by a third party, which is something that wouldn't necessarily be in their best interests. Nintendo likely wouldn't want to divert their own development teams to such projects, and it certainly wouldn't mean that PC gamers could buy the next iteration of Metroid, Zelda, Smash Bros or Mario Kart seen on the Switch for their PCs.

So that's more or less where I see this argument standing. Should Nintendo license their IPs to allow hand selected third party developers produce games using Nintendo's properties? They already are for mobile. But this OP does seem to be more of a "I want to play Nintendo games on my gaming PC" type of post.