The Nintendo Switch indie gold rush
At Gamescom, the GamesIndustry.biz team was at a publisher's booth being shown a number of indie games.
The exec that was giving us the tour pointed out that most of these titles were coming to Nintendo Switch. "We're doing that before it's too late," he said.
He was referring to the Switch gold rush. With major AAA publishers taking a cautious approach to the console, and with Nintendo spacing out its AAA titles throughout the year, there's been a big opportunity for smaller developers - especially since Switch sales have (so far) surprised even the most optimistic of analysts.
Savvy indies have flocked to the machine and the escalation has been rapid. Last week, some 18 games were made available on the Nintendo eShop. It might not be anywhere near Steam levels, but it raises the question: Is it already 'too late' to capitalise on the Switch opportunity?
"What's been observed in public is exactly true; every time a new digital storefront for games comes up and gains millions of budding customers, there's a huge market opportunity," says Jaakko Maaniemi from developer 10tons, which released one of the 18 games last week.
"Those who are quick to the market reap outsize rewards. The window of opportunity is always limited though, as competition always flocks to any market where good profit is being made. And the competition is massive in volume these days, due to greatly improved game making tools and every platform holder having embraced indies, making distribution equally easy. The indieapocalypse, if you will.
"Every indie out there who has paid any attention is aware of both the indieapocalypse and the new storefront gold rush cycle. It can lead only to exactly one thing; more competition being acutely sensitive about time to market, and doing everything they can to be one of the actors benefiting from the brief period of low competition. Which in turn leads to the platform holder being the decisive factor in how quickly the gold rush period ends.
"With Switch, Nintendo was early in offering support for popular engines like Unity and Unreal. They seem to have also been delivering dev kits quite rapidly and I haven't heard anything in the way of them throttling game submissions. They have also done an excellent job in how the development and publishing processes are for developers.
"In spring it was about a game or two a week, in the summer it was a handful, in early fall it was close to ten. Right now it's closer to 20"
"The result can be plainly seen by looking at the weekly number of Switch releases. In spring it was about a game or two, in the summer it was a handful of games, in early fall it was close to ten. Right now it's indeed closer to twenty. The trend couldn't be more clear. Xbox One monthly release amounts appear to have levelled to roughly 30 or so, so it certainly seems like Switch has exceeded that or at least will exceed that, which makes it close to PlayStation 4. Consoles, on the other hand, are still far away from Steam, which in turn is nowhere near mobile level firehosing."
Indie developer and former PlayStation indie boss Shahid Ahmad adds: "Nintendo has done well to court independent developers. The messaging isn't always perfect, with 'Nindies' implying a kind of ownership that is dissonant. That said, developers love them - I certainly do - and Nintendo has some really great people who just get it.
"There's always going to be a window of opportunity for anyone competent launching a game early in the life of a device; it's high demand, low supply. Few mainstream consoles have had the foresight to capture the imagination of independent developers out of the gate though, I can only think of the PS4 and the Switch as examples of this phenomenon. This works because the big publishers are hesitant to commit when they don't know how well the device will sell, and the addressable market, no matter how good the numbers, is unlikely to provide a healthy ROI for the bigger publishers. This is when a platform often provides incentives to share some risk.
"It's at the start of the life of a device that the pond is small and there are few fish where the chances of a breakaway hit are there. After the Switch's first Christmas, as sales of the device spike, the pond will be bigger, attracting bigger fish just as a lot more small fish are attracted to the growing pond."
Nintendo certainly appears to have done a good job. Almost all the developers we spoke to had warm words to say about the platform holder, and the lack of content has clearly been a boon to sales.
Sumo Digital's Snake Pass was one of the first success stories. Sumo had the game ready for a simultaneous launch across all platforms - not bad when you consider that Switch didn't exist when development began.
Arriving just a few weeks after the console, Snake Pass topped the eShop charts in almost every territory.
"Being first can be a great advantage but it's not without its risks," says Sumo MD Paul Porter. "I don't recall anyone predicting the reaction to Switch would be so positive. It worked out very well for us with Snake Pass but sometimes it's better to wait until there's a bigger install base.
"The Switch sold very well and demand still seems high, which naturally creates other opportunities for later releases. As with any platform, and maybe handhelds in particular, it's about finding the right games for it. It looks like there are interesting opportunities to release older titles as well as new games, which is really exciting. Ultimately the long-term success will depend on the whole consumer experience - from having a varied and a high quality catalogue of titles, to discoverability and the eShop."
"Shovel Knight, which was almost 3 years old when the Switch launched, sold more units out of the gate than any other platform," says Yacht Club's David D'Angelo.
"Switch versions are still outselling Xbox One and PS4 combined, so I'm not too worried"
"Switch versions are still outselling Xbox One and PS4 combined, so I'm not too worried," says Olivier Penot from PlugIn Digital. "The console has great momentum and the install base is growing. A key moment will be when Switch hardware sales plateau and Nintendo opens it to anyone registering online. Hopefully at this time a new PlayStation or Xbox console will release."
"We just brought two games to the Switch: Lightspeer and Butcher. They're completely different and are showing promise in terms of sales, but I have no illusions that this will last forever."
"The whole point of easy access for a developer to a platform's digital store is not to guarantee sales, but to give them a shot, where they didn't have that shot"
And Shahid Ahmad concludes: "Developers, by and large, love Nintendo and it is a sensational device, so I expect them to keep trying even when the numbers aren't in their favour.
"I do wish some people would drop the scare stories though. This isn't rocket science. The market gets tougher as the quality of software improves from both small and large developers as the addressable market also increases. So what? Saturation will be an issue, but that's hardly a surprise.
"The whole point of easy access for a developer to a platform's digital store is not to guarantee sales, but to give them a shot, where once upon a time they didn't have that shot, at all. I do wish some of the doom-mongers would remember that."
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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-10-04-the-nintendo-switch-indie-gold-rush
