Nintendo doesn't need third parties in the same way Sony and MS. Without third parties, Sony or MS wouldn't even be able to sell 15 million units. They do all the heavy lifting on the XBox and Playstation platforms.
Having a healthy third party ecosystem is good enough for Nintendo, it's not about matching Sony/MS, Sony/MS can't match Nintendo's 1st party, if they had to sell a system based on their own titles and not being carried by third parties they'd be out of the business in 3-4 years.
Switch has a chance to carve out a nice third party ecosystem because the demographics of the system are older, the ability to play console style games on the go is an attractive feature for any game pretty much, etc. etc.
There's only been two real notable Switch 3rd party exclusives ... Octopath and Bomberman R (well one year exclusive) and both are going to sell a million copies. You look at the eShop rankings on the Switch for any territory and they are often dominated by 3rd party titles (I'd say usually 70% of the titles are 3rd party). That's not bad at all.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 12 August 2018
