Is Switch 3rd party support really that impressive?

[couchmonkey]

superchunk said:

A table to compare and contrast the two.

	WiiU	Switch
Predecessor	Wii sold over 100MM, Insanely Popular. Expectations were it would do very well.	WiiU sold 14MM, lost all 3rd party support in 1st year.
Competition	WiiU was introduced and planned to 3rd parties well before PS4/XBO and its power was greater than PS360 to enough a degree it would allow reasonable ports.	Switch was introduced mid-gen to PS4/XBO with large differences in raw power putting many to think it would be too hard to port, if at all.
Launch Period	Q4 when all software companies are pushing the greater majority of their software launches.	Q1 (March) when there is the least number of game launches from any company.
Software Dev Cycle	Nintendo announced and shared WiiU with devs year+ before launch to better align with their dev cycle and lined the launch when majority of their games were launching (Q4)	Very few devs mentioned they had dev kits until less than 6 months before Switch launch which was during a time when 1) no games were being launched 2) any 2017 launching games were well into build phase and the costs to introduce a new system to support would be among the most complicated.
Customer Reception	Very poor. Readily available in stores within 2 weeks of launch.	Similar to Wii. Hard to find / sold out for months.

So what does this mean and how does it pertain to the OP?

The two systems launched with wholly opposite perceptions and realities. WiiU had everything going for it prior to launch. Before its showing and mediocre reaction at game shows just before launch, you had "unparalleled" support from 3rd parties. The success of Wii and power more aligned with PS360 lowered the risk 3rd parties used to evaluate early support. Of course all that fell through as the core concept of WiiU just didn't spark interest. Notable 3rd parties like EA saw this coming and abruptly changed their support in the six months before launch to only put out meh ports at best. 

Switch had as much pessimism as you can get leading up to launch. Nintendo didn't unveil the system until 6 months before launch. 3rd parties could not even get a hint of consumer interest until then. What they did know was that it would be an architecture closer to the competition but up to 1/2 the raw power. Imagine you are the CEO of these companies looking at the dismal WiiU and completely different take on Switch (which shared some core ideas of WiiU). Would you green light the funding to expand the scope of an in-process game to support Switch? I wouldn't.

This is why there is a difference in the number of games at launch. 3rd parties were cautious to begin with and then combining that with where they were with games already in development, it made more sense to only choose the potentially simpliest / low risk games to put the unplanned effort towards. That is why EA is giving FIFA and not Madden, etc.

Rol pushed this idea to me back at launch when I was expecting more titles for Q4. He was right. 2017 is just too late of a time frame for Switch when 3rd parties only really had dev kits in October 2016 and no one know the reception Switch would see until March 2017. 

Taking this reality into context you get a sense that Switch has a fantastic 2017 list of 3rd party games. They cover the gambit of genres and Nintendo themselves of course put out a lot of great games. 2018 will be a normalizing of support between Switch and its competition. We'll see all of the normal yearly games plus a good cross-section of the AAA stuff now that nearly every 3rd party will have built a Switch game in their dev tools.

Nice analysis!

NATO's comments ("not really impressive"): it's true that in a vacuum Switch is still mediocre for 3rd party support, especially if we're only looking at the big "AAA" publishers.  Considering Nintendo usually has 3rd party problems, though, it's not bad and the signs are promising.  Indies are getting on board in a huge way, tons of new games each week.  At the "AAA" level it's still very slow, but we're starting to see a lot of interesting announcements like Doom, or comments that Square is testing possiblities for FFXV.  I see those as very positive - when was the last time Nintendo had a new mainline FF game? SNES. When was the last time Nintendo had Doom or any other big PC FPS?  N64 (or maybe something on GameCube that I've forgotten). 

We'll see where it lands, and it's still so-so right now, but the future looks bright.