Is the Switch going to get two waves of 1st party support?

[Asriel]

Given Nintendo's public statements, their internal re-organisation and the fact 3DS support is obviously being wound down, I'd hope we don't see 'waves' of support on Switch - the plan seems to be to support the system with a consistent stream of software.

Right now that's be fairly straight-forward for Nintendo, but they had advantages this year in that projects which began life on Wii U (Zelda, Odyssey) became cross-platform or Switch exclusive, deluxe versions of Wii U titles launched (Pokken, Mario Kart), and they re-used an existing engine/assets to get something out quickly (Splatoon 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 2). I'm not being critical here - this is the kind of strategy Nintendo need going forward if they want their systems to do well. The end result is that Switch has an excellent first year line-up and consumers have responded to that, which means Nintendo and other companies can invest more heavily in future software for the system knowing there's a solid base growing.

In terms of future support, that does raise some question marks - especially given we don't know much about what Nintendo have planned for the system. That being said, it's one year to the day since Switch was revealed, and look at how well this first year has gone, even without a lengthy build-up in 'hype' etc. We know that Nintendo have Metroid Prime 4, Pokemon RPG, Yoshi, Kirby and Fire Emblem in development - with the latter 3 certainly being 2018 titles. Given the resources Nintendo have, though, you'd hope there's even more coming. It'd be easy for them to bring out deluxe versions of Smash and Mario Maker - versions that combine Wii U/3DS content and add some new content - and a franchise like Animal Crossing is due a new release, so 2018 could also easily have a consistent stream of support.

Anyway the main point is there are grounds to be optimistic that Nintendo will actually achieve a level of consistent software support with Switch that allows the system to flourish - but that we'll also just going to have to sit back and see what happens before we know for sure.