RolStoppable said:
That's a really weird thing to say. The direction is pretty clear to developers. What separates the Switch from tablets and smartphones are physical control inputs which has an obvious implication for the games that can be made. Vita sells at sub-10k levels in Japan and is on its way out; there won't be another Sony handheld. |
If you are right about there not being another Vita, then great, one factor that Nintendo won't have to worry about, but I bet Sony is already churning ideas on how to pull a Switch on the switch with what they have learned by developing the Vita/Playstation design. They might try to surprise us. Usually any successful concept Nintendo creates, Sony has incorporated within a couple of years. Especially since the Switch looks almost like a Vita with detachable sides. These companies don't just end ideas because another company succeeds at something.
Developers have consistently run from Nintendo in the past due to simple changes in philosophy or not going with the flow of game industry trends. The DS took almost 2 years to really start getting 3rd party support because developers didn't know what to do with it and questioned Nintendo's direction. With N64, the choice to stay with cartridges was baffling to a lot of developers who wanted to follow Square and EA's lead into larger storage space and a more mature direction. The N64 lost nearly all support as PSX gained it and, in turn, popularity. When Sony entered the handheld market, the attractive addition of power again drew a lot of developers immediately who thought Sony would monopolize Nintendo like they did with PS2. The 3DS also started off rough and lost a lot of support again, taking another year of sales and contesting developer caution, after the price drop, to really recapture the frequency of title releases the DS acquired. Developers are always finicky and very very hesitant to support any Nintendo system that tries something new. Any change scares a good 80% of the bigger development teams away. That is one reason why they love the consistency of the Xbox and Playstation strategies. It is just more and more power with a few added frills here and there. Nothing tricky, always sells, big company names and budget, i.e. dependable. The appeal of tablets and phones as platforms is yet another growing concern, especially now that the Switch looks like just a tablet with wings. Many developers have already been throwing weight in the mobile/tablet basket due to high userbase and increasing mobile tech. With mobile games, money flows in even with the simplest of games, so development commitment is minimal. Why develop on a potentially risky platform, spending more development resources with less return? Sure it is more complicated than that, but the trend is to avoid Nintendo until proven unavoidable.
