What would it take for 3rd party sales to be larger on Nintendo Systems?

[Soundwave]

Pajderman said:

Nintendos first party offerings are so strong that customers can satisfy their gaming needs just on Nintendos products.
The main reason I buy 3rd party games on my switch is the convenience of having them on the go and if they are very cheep. Indie games work well in this regard since they often cost less and have a certain uniqueness about them that can spark interest when browsing the shop.

Generally, offer better deals/products than the competition. Many third party games runs better on other hardware making them a harder sell on Nintendo systems. If it is the only system one own they still need to beat the first party offerings.

This isn't really the case with the Switch though, as per Nintendo's own numbers for several years now 3rd party software sales has been 50% or more of Switch's total software sold (and that doesn't include digital indie games either), so the majority of Switch owners are buying 3rd party software to some degree it would seem. 

600+ million in 3rd party software sold is pretty massive, yes maybe it's not as big as the PS4-PS5, but 600-700 million 3rd party games sold is probably in line with a system like the XBox 360 (Microsoft's peak in the industry).  

Who looks at the XBox 360 and thinks "well that wasn't a heavily 3rd party driven console". If Nintendo is getting in that range of 3rd party sales, that's significantly higher than what they were doing in the past and likely bodes well for higher support in the future as it's hard for a developer to look off a market that large. 

If Nintendo can be in that 450 million-700 million 3rd party games sold range, they would be in pretty good to great shape, this is probably a lot more than previous Nintendo systems, even more than the NES, SNES, and Game Boy (yeah obviously the overall market size was smaller back then) which are known for 3rd party support. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 07 November 2024