Is the Switch's 3rd Party Support a Major reason why the Switch is selling well?

[Slownenberg]

Basically Nintendo is making portable systems now, so the Nintendo library is gonna be stellar A/AA/AAA first party games, A/AA third party games, indie games, and older third party AAA games (and a few downgraded recent third party AAA games). It's a tradeoff gaining portability and the best first party games while giving up the latest AAA third party games. Unless at some point third parties decide to have another team make full featured portable versions of AAA games at the same time as the console game Nintendo will continue to not get major third party AAA support.

And you need third party support to have a successful system, otherwise you are an N64 that has the absolute best games of the gen but a very limited library so got destroyed in sales. Switch has been slow to get non-indie third party support, but let's remember the past several gens: 3rd parties left Nintendo en masse with N64 after Ninty was cocky jerks to 3rd parties for two generations and Sony came along and was much nicer, then GC got back some support, then Wii was all different with motion controls and third parties did't get how to take advantage of that plus they would have to start making an entirely different version of their AAA multi-plat games just for the Wii, Wii U was a massive failure so again third parties left, and now 3rd parties are in the process of coming back to Nintendo after taking a wait and see approach with the Switch after the Wii U's failure.

It's been a rough relationship with third parties for several generations, but now they are starting to come back, but they still have to make totally different versions of the game (or downgraded and sometimes questionable quality ports) to work on a portable compared to the other systems, and they don't seem to want to do that, and they seem to prefer to make games that show off the latest greatest graphics rather than make AAA games on a less powerful system instead. Furthermore, since they have cultivated their audience on the MicroSony twins for a couple decades now and not on Nintendo systems its kind of a self-reinforcing thing that they expect their games to sell much better on the other systems because that is where they've created their audience. The fact that when they release years-late downgraded versions of AAA games, rather than build same-date versions made specifically for the Switch and therefore not downgraded, and so of course these very late inferior versions sell far less, only adds to the self-reinforcing idea that their audience for AAA games isn't on Nintendo.

But third parties are coming back to Nintendo now not because Nintendo did everything right (see substandard and late online system, joycon drift, slow release of VC games, small system disk storage) but because Nintendo made a well marketed system that has great first party games and a normal control scheme.

Rather than needing to get everything right, I think they just need to not make a major design mistake (Wii U) and not offer control schemes so different that other game companies don't know what to make of it (Wii). Nintendo always offers something new and different, so it is up to Nintendo to get that initial success from system design and first party titles so third parties know they have a market to work with. While with MicroSony systems everyone knows the next system is gonna be the same thing with better graphics so third parties are more comfortable knowing the same audience is gonna show up to buy their new round of AAA action and sports games.