It is Much Too Early to Worry About Switch 3rd Party Support

[Johnw1104]

Yomieeee said:

Hiku said:

Wii is a great example of why sales don't neccesarily mean 3rd party support.
It turned out to be an extremely popular system, and yet every single Japanese AAA console franchise majorly ignored it. (Not even talking about western AAA support here.)

Just to name some of the most well known franchises off the top of my head.
All these games are on Playstation 3, but only the bolded ones are also or only Wii.

Capcom: Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6, Resident Evil: Revelations, Resident Evil: Revelations 2, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Marvel vs Capcom 3, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, Street Fighter 4, Super Street Fighter 4, Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, Ultra Street Fighter 4, Devil May Cry 4.

Square Enix: Star Ocean 4, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, Dragon Quest X (Online MMO), Final Fantasy IX (Onloine MMO).

Namco: Tekken 6, Tekken Tag 2, Tales of Symphonia 2, Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Graces, Tales of Xillia, Tales of Xillia 2, Tales of Zestiria.

SEGA: Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4, Yakuza 5, Valkyria Chronicles.

KOEI: A ton of Dynasty games, including spinoffs like Warriors Gundam, One Piece Warriors, etc. Wii got 2 out of 20+ games available on PS3/X360.

Konami: Metal Gear Solid 4, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Castlevania: Harmony of Despair.


That's just some of them.
But basically, Wii was ultra popular, but got squat from Japan. The Resident Evil games Wii got from Capcom were a RE4 port, and two on-rails shooter spinoffs.
While popularity of the system is an important factor, and I agree that many devs are likely taking the wait and see approach here, even if it turns out to be ultra popular that doesn't neccesarily mean that it will see games like Kingdom Hearts 3 on it.

That's because it was too much trouble to downgrade games enough so they could run on the Wii. But because of it's sales it got a lot of exclusive third party games too.

Madworld, Red Steel 1/2, No More Heroes 1/2, Deadly Creatures, Conduit 1/2, Dead Space Extraction, House of the Dead: Overkill, de Blob, etc.

If the sales are there the potential can't be ignored.

Yeah, to be fair I mentioned the Wii to show that they will always find a way to get games onto a console that is selling well. There is a massive difference between the two, though, in that 3rd party ports from modern games are very much feasible for the Switch, whereas direct ports were almost impossible back in the Wii days. The Switch has been designed to be as easy to design for as any console you'll find, and modern game engines have made scaling faaar more possible than the very hardware-limited environment that existed back with the PS3/X360/Wii.

That's without mentioning that conventional controls can be used with the Switch (whereas the focus with the Wii was entirely on motion controls) and there's the added draw for gamers of being able to bring these games on the go (with the Wii there was no benefit to buying a port for it over another console), so the Switch is certainly better positioned than the Wii was.