| Jon-Erich said: I find it amazing where we've ended up. In the past, developers loved to show off how much they could take advantage of a powerhouse PC or brand new gaming console. Nowadays with the Switch, developers love to brag about how much they're able to achieve with a machine that's underpowered compared to the competition. I'm guessing its because they get some sense of pride out of creating a game that runs on a portable device that people could take with them and having the game look and play similar to the more powerful versions. If they can do it, then that is an achievement. |
I think it comes down to Switch basically being the first mainstream portable that can run ports of higher end console/PC games and some developers are starting to see a potentially large, untapped market there.
Obviously previous Nintendo portables were waaayyyy behind consoles/PC so games either had to be built specifically for them or ports of console games from 2 generations back.
PSP was definitely a few steps ahead of Nintendo handhelds in this regard but still wasnt quite there. PSP could probably handle many console games of the PS2 era but 360 & PS3 released just 1-2 years after PSP and most of those games couldnt be ported down to it so when it came to multiplat titles, PSP usually had a seperate version.
Vita was a similar situation where it could probably have handled downports of a solid amount of PS3/360 games but PS4/XBO were just around the corner and sales never picked up enough for devs to give it serious consideration.
Then we have smartphones/tablets that are becoming more and more powerful but the problem there is that most games cant find success there unless they are simple and free, casual games. The demographics just arent right.
So that brings us to Switch, basically the first portable device that seems to have the right mix of sales, demographics & specs to allow these type of games to come over and find success.
When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.
