Why are third party games selling well on Switch?

[Soundwave]

Barkley said:

Soundwave said:

The eShop buyer ship shows the Switch has a fairly diverse population of digital buyers.

Like you might expect the Switch eShop to look like this:

1. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
2. Mario Odyssey
3. Kirby
4. Mario Tennis
5. Go Vacation
6. Just Dance 2018
7. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
8. Captain Toad
9. Minecraft
10. Pokken Tournament

But actually it is like this right now:

1. Dead Cells
2. Overcooked 2
3. Okami HD
4. Minecraft
5. Hollow Knight
6. Megaman X Legacy Collection 2
7. Octopath Traveller
8. Salt and Sanctuary
9. Megaman Legacy Collection 1
10. Plague Road

Yes, I mean Overcooked 2 seems to fit the traditional "Nintendo audience" stereotype ... but Dead Cells? Octopath? Plague Road? Okami? It looks like Capcom is doing quite well for themselves too, MM Legacy Collection is really cleaning up on the Switch its be up on these charts for a while. And then a bit further down the chart you see things like Oxenfree doing well too. And this is how the eShop *usually* is also, it's not some outliner, the eShop is usually dominated by 3rd party games, not Nintendo's stuff and the 3rd party content is more diverse than you would expect. 

If we look at Rol's summary thread we can see that users on here purchase 19% of first party titles digitally, but 72% of third party titles digitally. This is the reason third-party, (mainly the smaller filesize titles) are so high on the eshop. These high digital sales don't translate over to the bigger AAA 3rd party games like Wolfenstein 2.

It's also worth noting that 4 of those games in the top 10 do not have physical releases, and Megaman's physical release requires Legacy Collection 2 download so that may contribute to people ignoring physical and going for digital instead.

It still shows people are willing to try/buy a more diverse offering of Switch software, we've also seen from Nintendo's reports that many of these games are selling very well like Hollow Knight. There have been spikes for things like FIFA on the eShop and Octopath has done really well there too. 

Maybe it is also time to look at the "every game must be retail + $59.99 MSRP" layout as old and tired, because it looks to me like plenty of people are willing to buy non-Nintendo content on the Switch, not everything needs to be a $60 game, though Octopath shows that can work too. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 13 August 2018