What do you guys think?
During the Switch gen you could argue it was Nintendo's best 3rd party support since the SNES. We've had many first of franchises that haven't ever released on a Nintendo console before or in years make their debut on Switch. Looking at the Switch's 3rd party support right now still surprises me and alot of people since I'm not used to seeing games like GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Mortal Kombat, Skyrim, NBA2k, Apex Legends, Witcher 3 and others make their way to a Nintendo console. It's part of the reason its become one of my favorite consoles of all time, all these games available with the ability to play them on the go as well.
The Switch's 3rd party support was far from perfect though. At launch 3rd party support was pretty dry for obvious reasons, many developers were skeptical/doubtful the Switch would do very well after the disaster of the Wii U so many took the "wait and see" approach before they made games for it or used the excuse that "Switch isn't powerful enough". However, once it became clear it was gonna be a smash hit, we saw developers will there way into making games that have no business of running on a 2015 mobile chipset on the Switch, stuff like Doom, Witcher 3, and many others.
However, a good deal of 3rd party support would miss out on the Switch due to its weaker hardware, many current gen/next gen ports coming to Switch were often a hit or miss on whether they came or not, and towards the latter part of the Switch's gen it started to become more like a miss as developers were transitioning to next gen console development, making to gap too big to overcome in many cases. Stuff like Call of Duty, current Assasin's Creed games, Madden, Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption 2, Far Cry, new Resident Evil games, new Final Fantasy games, and many more would miss out on Switch 1.
Where the Switch definitely excelled at the most were older ports of 3rd party games and indies. I felt like the portable nature of the Switch also made older 3rd party ports perfect for the system since it's the perfect system to replay older games in a new way like on the go. I think these types of games did more successful for the Switch than even current gen games since it's a perfect system to double dip on a game without sacrificing graphics, stuff like the GTA trilogy actually was did 2nd most successful on Switch in Europe, better than Xbox One, XBox Series, and PS5 versions of it.
For Switch 2 however, I expect 3rd party support to be even better. Developers already have high confidence it will be a success so from the jump we'll already see 3rd parties make games for it. Microsoft seems to be heaviliy transitioning to multiplatform games so eventually I expect stuff like Forza and Halo to come to Switch 2 which are huge games. We're already confirmed to get COD on the Switch 2 which will help 3rd party support and other stuff like Doom.
I also think porting to Switch 2 even from more powerful consoles will be easier than Switch 1. I feel like tech like DLSS will make the Switch 2's specs more efficient and closer to the capability of its more powerful counterparts than the Switch 1 was. I think the Xbox Series S being a less powerful next gen machine will also inadvertly help developers optimize their games closer to Switch 2.