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Forums - Nintendo - Is Switch 3rd party support really that impressive?

NATO said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

So Wolfeinstein 2? 

Oh wait, is the excuse for that one going to be it's a few months off? 

As far as third party goes, you simply can't win with the Switch, in it's first year at least. There will always be something to complain about. It's not like Sony could do any better either, as the Vita has shown. It's simply hard to convince Western third party to support a handheld system. Though it does suck Capcom and Square are taking ages

As I mentioned in the past thread, I've zero issues with Wolfenstein 2, so why would I have issues with it here?

My issue is that the large majority of the games are late ports of old indies off of other consoles, I clearly said if most titles were parallel releases that would be cool and impressive.

Pointing to one single title that's sort of (as you say, a few months off of being parallel) doing that, doesn't change what I said, at all.

Ewww why do you and Hynad have the same avatar now? Gross.

The way I see it, there is honestly very little the Switch can do in it's first year to guarantee good-great third party support. It's simply very challenging. I don't think that giving it a bit of a pass compared to the X or PS is that bad, which is why I would consider it more so good then great or bad. 

Also my position on indie games has changed greatly thanks to Sonic Mania(even though it's not an indie game) and the Switch, so i'm not sure how to feel about the dissaprovel of indie games as good support. Some stuff like Golf Story or Steamworld Dig 2 is pretty cool to see.



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NATO said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

The way I see it, there is honestly very little the Switch can do in it's first year to guarantee good-great third party support. It's simply very challenging. I don't think that giving it a bit of a pass compared to the X or PS is that bad, which is why I would consider it more so good then great or bad. 

Also my position on indie games has changed greatly thanks to Sonic Mania(even though it's not an indie game) and the Switch, so i'm not sure how to feel about the dissaprovel of indie games as good support. Some stuff like Golf Story or Steamworld Dig 2 is pretty cool to see.

I dissapprove of the third party support a whole, because while some good titles are making their way over (where the fuck is risk of rain though?), there's a lot of crap, and a lot of games being ported over just for the sake of tapping into the new market for additional sales now that their titles sales have peaked on other systems.

As you say, it happens for every early device, but as I said above, in those cases the support isn't impressive either, it's just predictable.

X company porting Y game over to Z system, months to years after it launched on other platforms is not about being super nice to Z systems fans, or to show your support for Z system, regardless of what the developer/publisher says, it's about milking the most money out of an existing game.

When big developers come forward and say, WE FULLY SUPPORT Z SYSTEM AND LOOK FORWARD TO A LONG AND HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP WITH Z SYSTEMS CUSTOMER BASE, what they're actually saying is, hey we're going to release our games on your systems too, if we butter you up before hand you're more likely to buy our shit.

As the WiiU has shown, those words and promises don't mean shit unless the resulting game sells enough for the publisher/developer to make decent enough profit to continue to do so, those promises and words sure dissapear fast when the sales come in below expectation.

So my take is, I don't care what any publisher/developer says, I care what they do and how what they do changes over the years.

AngryLittleAlchemist said:

Ewww why do you and Hynad have the same avatar now? Gross.

Because I'm parodying this.

Also don't use "gross", it makes you sound like an entitled lefty.

I know what you're parodying but still. What does "gross" have to do with being on the left? Lol. 

I mean, I guess what you're saying makes sense. 



 

 



NATO said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

I know what you're parodying but still. 

Better?

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

 

Now i'm going to use that! 



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superchunk said:

A table to compare and contrast the two.

  WiiU Switch
Predecessor Wii sold over 100MM, Insanely Popular. Expectations were it would do very well. WiiU sold 14MM, lost all 3rd party support in 1st year.
Competition WiiU was introduced and planned to 3rd parties well before PS4/XBO and its power was greater than PS360 to enough a degree it would allow reasonable ports. Switch was introduced mid-gen to PS4/XBO with large differences in raw power putting many to think it would be too hard to port, if at all.
Launch Period Q4 when all software companies are pushing the greater majority of their software launches. Q1 (March) when there is the least number of game launches from any company.
Software Dev Cycle Nintendo announced and shared WiiU with devs year+ before launch to better align with their dev cycle and lined the launch when majority of their games were launching (Q4) Very few devs mentioned they had dev kits until less than 6 months before Switch launch which was during a time when 1) no games were being launched 2) any 2017 launching games were well into build phase and the costs to introduce a new system to support would be among the most complicated.
Customer Reception Very poor. Readily available in stores within 2 weeks of launch.  Similar to Wii. Hard to find / sold out for months.

So what does this mean and how does it pertain to the OP?

The two systems launched with wholly opposite perceptions and realities. WiiU had everything going for it prior to launch. Before its showing and mediocre reaction at game shows just before launch, you had "unparalleled" support from 3rd parties. The success of Wii and power more aligned with PS360 lowered the risk 3rd parties used to evaluate early support. Of course all that fell through as the core concept of WiiU just didn't spark interest. Notable 3rd parties like EA saw this coming and abruptly changed their support in the six months before launch to only put out meh ports at best. 

Switch had as much pessimism as you can get leading up to launch. Nintendo didn't unveil the system until 6 months before launch. 3rd parties could not even get a hint of consumer interest until then. What they did know was that it would be an architecture closer to the competition but up to 1/2 the raw power. Imagine you are the CEO of these companies looking at the dismal WiiU and completely different take on Switch (which shared some core ideas of WiiU). Would you green light the funding to expand the scope of an in-process game to support Switch? I wouldn't.

This is why there is a difference in the number of games at launch. 3rd parties were cautious to begin with and then combining that with where they were with games already in development, it made more sense to only choose the potentially simpliest / low risk games to put the unplanned effort towards. That is why EA is giving FIFA and not Madden, etc.

Rol pushed this idea to me back at launch when I was expecting more titles for Q4. He was right. 2017 is just too late of a time frame for Switch when 3rd parties only really had dev kits in October 2016 and no one know the reception Switch would see until March 2017. 

Taking this reality into context you get a sense that Switch has a fantastic 2017 list of 3rd party games. They cover the gambit of genres and Nintendo themselves of course put out a lot of great games. 2018 will be a normalizing of support between Switch and its competition. We'll see all of the normal yearly games plus a good cross-section of the AAA stuff now that nearly every 3rd party will have built a Switch game in their dev tools.

Nice analysis!

NATO's comments ("not really impressive"): it's true that in a vacuum Switch is still mediocre for 3rd party support, especially if we're only looking at the big "AAA" publishers.  Considering Nintendo usually has 3rd party problems, though, it's not bad and the signs are promising.  Indies are getting on board in a huge way, tons of new games each week.  At the "AAA" level it's still very slow, but we're starting to see a lot of interesting announcements like Doom, or comments that Square is testing possiblities for FFXV.  I see those as very positive - when was the last time Nintendo had a new mainline FF game? SNES. When was the last time Nintendo had Doom or any other big PC FPS?  N64 (or maybe something on GameCube that I've forgotten). 

We'll see where it lands, and it's still so-so right now, but the future looks bright.



If I bought a switch, it would be for the exclusives (I think nobody buys a nintendo console for 3rd party multiplats anymore). The problem is the only Nintendo game a care about is Zelda, no way I'd buy a console for just one game.



The support is not impressive, but after the Wii U it seems great. Remember that Bethesda and Rockstar didn't release ANYTHING on Wii U, so that's already an improvement.



Lifetime Sales Predictions 

Switch: 161 million (was 73 million, then 96 million, then 113 million, then 125 million, then 144 million, then 151 million, then 156 million)

PS5: 122 million (was 105 million, then 115 million) Xbox Series X/S: 38 million (was 60 million, then 67 million, then 57 million. then 48 million. then 40 million)

Switch 2: 120 million (was 116 million)

PS4: 120 mil (was 100 then 130 million, then 122 million) Xbox One: 51 mil (was 50 then 55 mil)

3DS: 75.5 mil (was 73, then 77 million)

"Let go your earthly tether, enter the void, empty and become wind." - Guru Laghima

It's good but not great. I don't think the Switch is ever going to consistently get the AAA games that other current gen systems have due to the hardware differences. This is why I wished that it had been a little closer to PS4 in overall system specs. That said, I think it can do very well with third party support in an entirely different way. There are so many classic games from older systems that can have new life breathed in to them through portability and remasters/remakes. If I could one day have games like KOTOR, Fallout 3, the original Mass Effect trilogy, Bioshock, Resident Evil, etc. on the go along with great first party Nintendo titles and indies, I would consider the system a success.



"There are things which, if done by the few, we should refuse to imitate; yet when the majority have begun to do them, we follow along - just as if anything were more honourable because it is more frequent!"

-Seneca