Nintendo's game output is improving but still pathetic compared to Wii/DS era

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Jumpin said:

For Nintendo, certainly. The Switch had a very top heavy launch, while Nintendo seemed to push harder through years 2-3 on Wii.

But, and it's a fairly big BUT, third party support on Switch is unparalleled in Nintendo's history for the first 2.5 years; the Wii is the next best, and that's a very distant second. Even the much loved SNES took about 3 years to really take off in the third party department; outside of Secret of Mana, Super Castlevania, and Street Fighter 2, nearly all of the classic SNES third party games are from 1994, 95, and 96. The DS ALSO took a few years to really take off in the third party software department.

The Super Nintendo is the only Nintendo console I can recall having strong third party support right from the beginning.  Here are some of the third party games from the first 12 months in North America:

Sim City
Super R-Type
Populous
ActRaiser
Final Fight
Final Fantasy 2 (4)
Super Ghouls and Ghosts
Super Castlevania 4
Ys 3
Super Smash TV
Contra 3
Street Fighter 2
TMNT 4: Turtles in Time

That is an extremely solid list of third party games.  Any system (Nintendo or otherwise) would be proud to have that good of a list of third party games during its first 12 months.  That is on top of really strong first party games like Super Mario World and Link to the Past.  The first 12 months of the SNES were amazing.  It was all of those later years where it looked like the Genesis might a competitive list of games, that is where the SNES got into trouble.