couchmonkey said:
i like this convo, for correct observations: 1.big industrtry games actually are not doing that great, 2. but most big industry games are late and inferior to the PS4Box versions, 3. Indies are doing very well in a lot of cases. May I add 4. Indies are also releasing a lot of games very late (Stardew, Terraria, Celeste).
a couple of hypotheses:
1. Switch or even Nintendo does not play that great with most "AAA" content; players are looking for different experiences (moreretro, maybe easier to digest, maybe less cinematic) 2. AAAgames need to be more on time and more optimized ( but then how come late indies are ok?) |
I'd say that indies are less dependent on "its new!" hype. Indies generally are retro graphics or just smaller games with a lot less hype, and obviously less marketing. AAA content are all about building hype and promoting the game to have a big release - all the excitement is around the release of the new game because its new, and when its not new anymore its old and old means no hype.
Indie games on the other hand usually already look old so from a buyer's perspective it doesn't really matter if its new or not, cuz it probably looks like it came out 25 years ago anyways. Probably a lot of times people don't even know if an indie game is new or not unless they really follow indie games. Heck I had no idea Celeste wasn't new when it came out on Switch, and didn't find out stardew valley wasn't new until after it came out on switch. But I sure as hell know, for example, that Skyrim is years old. Also I think people don't even really refer to indie games as ports when they come to other platforms. People aren't talking about indies like "oh its just an old port" the way they talk about large studio games "ah its an old port it better be majorly discounted and why are they being lazy and porting old games instead of making new games".
The perception of the indie game market is very different. Indie games sell well on Switch cuz nobody cares if they're old. And since they are indie, it often might be the only really popular game that person or indie studio has made, so they're not just gonna crank out another great seller from a stable of franchises that they don't have, their all star IS that one game. But people do care about when big studios just put old ports of games to make some quick cash instead of making new games.
It's not that the Switch doesn't play well with AAA content, it clearly does because Nintendo's AAA content is selling like crazy. It's just that third parties haven't put any new AAA content on the system. Yeah Skyrim sold a million, and that is fantastic because Skyrim hasn't been an exciting game to have on a system in YEARS! Put an actual brand new AAA third party game on Switch and it'll sell the same as AAA games always do.
