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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Regarding Switch third party support: Developers don't care about power

DonFerrari said:
For anyone that says developers doesn't care about power....
That is the reason for change of generation about every generation.
When devs start hitting the ceiling of the HW on consoles and it's feasible to make a newer and stronger HW that is what MS and Sony do.

No, the real reason is business. If you need only one thing (car, cell phone, ...) you tend to buy one and use it a long time. For a seller of that product this is bad, as it means after they sold to everyone they are relegated to replacement sales and some kid getting grown up and needing it's own copy of the thing. So they introduced a long time ago new models for the product and introducing new models regularly with new features, colors, ads, whatever. Gaming consoles are differing only in one regard: a successful console needs a big library and a game maker prefers platforms that have a huge userbase he can sell to. So the introduction of new models is risky. Therefore we don't see new models every year like for cell phones. Still, if the sales of the console start to drop the risk for a new console is reducing. If the old one sells slower and slower you can take the risk to start with a new console with small library and small userbase (in the beginning).

But you always need something to sell the new model. For gaming consoles the simple thing is to say: games look better. That's why they increase the power, but increased power is not the initial reason to introduce a new gen.



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The_Liquid_Laser said:
RolStoppable said:
It's first and foremost about politics. AAA publishers want their business centered on PS and Xbox, so PC and Nintendo routinely get the short end of the stick. That's not going to change, so you are very wrong about Switch not missing out on many games.

The thing is that Switch doesn't need those games, so it's of little consequence that it won't get them.

Yes, this!

But to elaborate some, big third parties don't want to compete with the little developers.  So, they would prefer Sony and Microsoft make high powered consoles to make development costs go up.  This drives the little guys away so that the big companies have less competition.  Then Nintendo comes along and makes a console where every developer can succeed.  Big companies don't want this at all, so they don't want to support Nintendo unless they absolutely have to in order to profit.

But the Switch is at an interesting point, because most Japanese companies are really more in the AA or less range, especially if you are measuring by development costs.  So most Japanese companies are going to heavily back the Switch.  This is doubly true because it is also the best selling console in Japan every week.  The Japanese developers are going to back the Switch in a big way.  Generation 9 is not going to be hardcore vs. casual, but instead East vs. West.  Although smaller Western devs are going to back the Switch too, so I really think Gen 9 is going to landslide toward the Switch.

Conspiracy theories never cease to amaze.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

Barkley said:

Lots of excess power makes porting easy, what I said is true. Obviously porting between PS4/XBO is easier than Switch/PS4. Don't take every little thing a Developer says in PR as gospel.

Some adjustment may be required for the Switch due to power differences, yes. But otherwise, no developer has complained about the porting process, and have said that it's super easy. 



Power is the main reason the Wii, WiiU and Switch missed out on big AAA third party games. User base is a factor, but that didn't stop Bethesda from porting Skyrim to Switch. Yet it didn't get Fallout 4 because it targeted PS4 and X1 as a base spec. Just like how WiiU got AC3 and 4 but as soon as Ubisoft stopped targeting PS3/360 with AC Unity they skipped the WiiU.

If Nintendo had a home console as powerful as the PS4 and X1 with proper storage media and none of the bullshit, it would be getting Red Dead, CoD, BF, Kingdom Hearts III, and everything that is currently PS4/X1/ only, because there would be no reason not to. Shit, look no further than Kingdom Hearts III, yeah. It's coming to Xbox but not Switch, user base clearly isn't the issue here. KHIII is a 8th gen game, Switch graphics capabilities are basically 7th gen.



LethalP said:
Power is the main reason the Wii, WiiU and Switch missed out on big AAA third party games. User base is a factor, but that didn't stop Bethesda from porting Skyrim to Switch. Yet it didn't get Fallout 4 because it targeted PS4 and X1 as a base spec. Just like how WiiU got AC3 and 4 but as soon as Ubisoft stopped targeting PS3/360 with AC Unity they skipped the WiiU.

If Nintendo had a home console as powerful as the PS4 and X1 with proper storage media and none of the bullshit, it would be getting Red Dead, CoD, BF, Kingdom Hearts III, and everything that is currently PS4/X1/ only, because there would be no reason not to. Shit, look no further than Kingdom Hearts III, yeah. It's coming to Xbox but not Switch, user base clearly isn't the issue here. KHIII is a 8th gen game, Switch graphics capabilities are basically 7th gen.

Lies lies, everybody knows 3rd parties have an agreement to screw Nintendo



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

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RolStoppable said:
It's first and foremost about politics. AAA publishers want their business centered on PS and Xbox, so PC and Nintendo routinely get the short end of the stick. That's not going to change, so you are very wrong about Switch not missing out on many games.

The thing is that Switch doesn't need those games, so it's of little consequence that it won't get them.

It doesn't need them but having them would be nice. But It just isn't possible for a game that targets X1 and PS4 as the base spec to release on Switch without totally rebuilding the rendering pipeline. That's not feasable so they don't do it. So power actually plays a pretty fundamental part in this. Also PC gets 99.9% of all AAA third party games that come out, Red Dead and Kingdom Hearts situations are actually quite rare. So I don't know why you're lumping Nintendo in with the PC as a sort of 'us vs them' thing.

Last edited by LethalP - on 30 May 2018

OneTime said:
Most game engines are good at dealing with a variety of different strength CPU and GPUs.

In any case, the “Nintendo needs ports” argument is a fallacy. People who want those kinds of games will buy a PS4. Nintendo need a different market. Look at XBOne: other than occasional games like Halo it hasn’t found its own thing to differentiate, so (probably randomly) PS4 won this round.

It depends on what Nintendo's concept it.  With the Switch it makes sense for 3rd parties to want their games on the system because they are making these games available portably. That's why you see games like Skyrim being so successful on Switch vs other Nintendo consoles.  The only difficulty is that because the system is weaker it takes a lot of time to port and tweak the games so that they can run on the system and this is making it less attractive to actually port the games over.   Its the perfect system for old ports.  Kind of like the DS back in the day had a lot of good classic games ported to it. 



LethalP said:
Power is the main reason the Wii, WiiU and Switch missed out on big AAA third party games. User base is a factor, but that didn't stop Bethesda from porting Skyrim to Switch. Yet it didn't get Fallout 4 because it targeted PS4 and X1 as a base spec. Just like how WiiU got AC3 and 4 but as soon as Ubisoft stopped targeting PS3/360 with AC Unity they skipped the WiiU.

If Nintendo had a home console as powerful as the PS4 and X1 with proper storage media and none of the bullshit, it would be getting Red Dead, CoD, BF, Kingdom Hearts III, and everything that is currently PS4/X1/ only, because there would be no reason not to. Shit, look no further than Kingdom Hearts III, yeah. It's coming to Xbox but not Switch, user base clearly isn't the issue here. KHIII is a 8th gen game, Switch graphics capabilities are basically 7th gen.

Are you sure that's the reason? Bethesda didn't actually say anything about Fallout regarding the Switch. As for other games, Kingdom Hearts III can certainly run on Switch, it's on Unreal Engine 4, so with a few adjustments, a Switch ports is feasible. Problem is, The game's too far into development to consider a Switch port at the moment, the Developers want to concentrate of the existing versions first, before considering the Switch, which is something they said themselves. 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/07/16/kingdom-hearts-3-director-switch-version-maybe-possible-after-xbox-one-ps4-versions-are-released

Similar to how Bethesda didn't decide to port Wolfenstein II to Switch until after the game finished development (It was basically a month away from release when they announced it). 



The_Liquid_Laser said:

Yes, this!

But to elaborate some, big third parties don't want to compete with the little developers.  So, they would prefer Sony and Microsoft make high powered consoles to make development costs go up.  This drives the little guys away so that the big companies have less competition.  Then Nintendo comes along and makes a console where every developer can succeed.  Big companies don't want this at all, so they don't want to support Nintendo unless they absolutely have to in order to profit.

But the Switch is at an interesting point, because most Japanese companies are really more in the AA or less range, especially if you are measuring by development costs.  So most Japanese companies are going to heavily back the Switch.  This is doubly true because it is also the best selling console in Japan every week.  The Japanese developers are going to back the Switch in a big way.  Generation 9 is not going to be hardcore vs. casual, but instead East vs. West.  Although smaller Western devs are going to back the Switch too, so I really think Gen 9 is going to landslide toward the Switch.

You honestly think third parties wouldn't want another successful console they could release their games on? You think Bethesda wouldn't port Fallout 4 to Switch if it was powerful enough? Where is your head at?



TheMisterManGuy said:
Barkley said:

Lots of excess power makes porting easy, what I said is true. Obviously porting between PS4/XBO is easier than Switch/PS4. Don't take every little thing a Developer says in PR as gospel.

Some adjustment may be required for the Switch due to power differences, yes. But otherwise, no developer has complained about the porting process, and have said that it's super easy. 

umm the team that ported doom said it was a wicked hard port, that was a 1080p/60fps ps4 game btw.

https://nintendoeverything.com/doom-switch-dev-says-the-port-has-been-wicked-hard-wishes-gamers-didnt-focus-on-tech-specs-over-fun/