Why is the Switch still not getting big games from 3rd parties? October edition

[Jumpin]

potato_hamster said:

Jumpin said:

I'd say userbase counts for something, and when Switch has it, its games will also be significantly higher in sales.

Wii total sales: 102M

Wii Sports: 82M
Mario Kart Wii: 36M
Wii Sports Resort: 33M
New Super Mario Bros Wii: 29M

Okay, but what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? The argument being made is that third party games aren't selling well, and incapable of selling well because the user base isn't big enough. Clearly the Switch's user base is big enough to have numerous games with over 4 million in sales, so that means the user base is big enough for any game, especially those that are selling millions on other platforms to sell millions on the switch.

Let me put it to you this way. Do you think GTA V or Red Dead Redemption 2 would only sell 1.1 million units on Switch like the best selling multi-platform game (FIFA) has?

Third party games did sell better on Wii, too. Several sold over 5 million, even 10 million. But different sorts of games sell well on Nintendo platforms. The games that have sold well on Switch so-far are mainly the system sellers - people bought the console for one or a few of those games. Zelda was the killer app, so it's not a matter of 20 million Switch owners deciding to buy 8 million Zeldas, but 8 million people who wanted Zelda and bought a Switch to play it; and some wanted Mario Kart or another game too. With the Wii, it was also Nintendo's killer app (Wii Sports) and first party software that spearheaded the way, but once the userbase built up, third-party games began to sell by the hundreds of millions. In the late years of the Wii, third-party software sold at phenomenal rates, a half a billion pieces of software (largely third party) sold from 2010 onward with the Wii, and that was after the console hardware sales had cooled off significantly from its hottest rate in 2008.

Nintendo has a long history of high selling games that are quirkier and/or great as local multiplayer titles. If you're coming up with a high fidelity game about cowboys in some historical US setting, that's a very weak pitch - it's not likely many Nintendo fans are going to be as interested as, say, squid people firing ink all over the place and at each other in order to take out opponents and acquire territory.

Graphics matter, but in a different way. Nintendo fans generally don't care as much about the fidelity of graphics so much as the artistic appeal; that's why you have pretty looking 8-bit games doing so well when higher fidelity games are available. While Nintendo is the clear master here, other game creators with similar style find that their titles sell best on Nintendo platforms.