"Nintendo users only buy Nintendo games on Nintendo systems" How true was this?

[SanAndreasX]

For me, it's not true, but with a major caveat that Nintendo is the most well-represented publisher/developer in my library, by far.

I have 80-ish boxed Switch games. Of those, 25 are Nintendo products.

I do buy a lot of third-party games, and I make it a point to buy some third-party games on Nintendo hardware to vote with my wallet for more of the same. I bought a lot of the so-called "miracle ports" like Doom, Doom Eternal, and The Witcher 3.

A lot of my favorite games on Switch are third-party games. My favorite game of 2018 was Valkyria Chronicles 4. My favorite of 2019 was Dragon Quest XI S. In 2021, it was Shin Megami Tensei V.

Nintendo is the one company whose hardware I consistently buy. I own every Nintendo system from NES to Switch. Every one of those systems has third party hardware on it, even the ones where third-party support was scarce. I bought most of Konami's N64 titles like Goemon and Castlevania. On Gamecube, my favorite RPG was/is Tales of Symphonia, a game I loved so much that I even rebought it on Switch knowing that it had performance issues (which have since been patched out). I also had Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, Soulcalibur 2, and Resident Evil games on Gamecube. Wii was ironically more Nintendo-centric for me than the Gamecube was despite a larger volume of software, and I only had a handful of third party Wii U games. On handhelds, third party was represented well.

However, for 20 years, between 1997 and 2017, I was a pretty PlayStation-centric gamer. Most of the third party games I liked, namely Japanese games from Square, Enix, Capcom, and Namco, migrated to PlayStation. I very seldom bought first party titles on PlayStation. That changed when the Switch came out and got some pretty solid support from Japanese third parties. I didn't really touch my PS4 much after that.

I overwhelmingly prefer Japanese games over western games as well, so there's that. Those games do show up more on Nintendo systems. There are western franchises I like. I No Man's Sky is a longtime favorite as a successor to Starlight. I like city sims. I was as impressed by Baldur's Gate 3 as anyone else. I loved Fallout 3 and NV, but Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 knocked the shine off of Bethesda for me. I enjoy The Witcher. I don't care about EA, Activision Blizzard, or Ubisoft.

Even on the NES and SNES, when Nintendo had a stranglehold on the major third parties, Nintendo games were the biggest part of my game library. Even then, I bought the NES and SNES because of Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, not because of Mega Man, Castlevania, or Final Fantasy. To me, the NES and SNES were delivery systems for Nintendo games. Third party games were the side dishes, the drinks, and the dessert that made the meal a little sweeter, but Nintendo was always the main course.