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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Why are third party games selling well on Switch?

Jumpin said:
Soundwave said:

Because it's a more core centric Nintendo platform and Nintendo's fan base is getting older, and older people have more disposable income than kids. That opens the door for a broader variety of content to do better. Things like FIFA for example are doing alright on Switch. 

To be honest too, there were 3rd party successes on the N64. Things like Turok 1/2 both sold over a million copies, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron was over a million, San Fransico Rush and NFL Quarterback Club (not even a good game), WCW Ntiro sold over a million, even South Park 64 I believe sold over a million. So Switch maybe is just a normalization from the Wii/DS era where the systems were flooded with a bunch of shovelware in large part from 3rd parties chasing the Wii Sports/Brain Training fads. 

Switch is the first Nintendo system that doesn't rely heavily on casuals and doesn't look like a child's toy since the N64, but unlike the N64, cartridges aren't nearly as restrictive anymore. If the N64 had the option for even 200MB cartridges (1/3 a CD) at a reasonable cost it would've gotten way more dev support. Today you can do 16-32GB games for a reasonable cost and next year 64GB cards will be available, not to mention today you have the ability to have game data in download patches via the internet, something impossible during the N64 days. 

This is an example of selective memory. The N64 was NOT very successful for third-party software. The Wii, on the other hand, was Nintendo's most successful console for third-party sales.


The N64 had 53 total million sellers.
The Wii had 160 total million sellers.

Of those 53, 38 of them were published by Nintendo. The Wii had 40 Nintendo published games sell over 1 million.
The N64 had 15 total million sellers that were third party published.
The Wii had 120 total million sellers that were third party published.

To go deeper into total sales:

The N64 sold a total of 225 million games shipped, 133 million were published by Nintendo, leaving a total of  92 million third party.
The Wii had a total of 965 million games shipped, 405 million were published by Nintendo, leaving a total of 560 million third party.

To break it down into percentages: 58% of Wii games sold were third-party.  40% of N64 games were third-party.

The total number of third-party games that sold on Wii is roughly 2.5X higher than the TOTAL number of games sold on N64, over 6 times higher than the total number third party games sold, and a total penetration rate of about double for third party games on the Wii than those compared to the N64.

To compare other million-selling third-party games:
Gameboy has 11
SNES had 29
NES had 34
GBA had 42
3DS has 19 (But 45 first party)
DS had 83 (and a whopping 59 first party)

Whether people like it or not, the Wii was the King of third-party sales when it comes to Nintendo's consoles. DS is the second most successful by quite a distance.

Honestly think that 160 million sellers is overblown, if its VGChartz data that is overblown big time. From sources like third parties themselves, the number would appear to be closer to 30 million third party million sellers to go with 36-37 or so from Nintendo. And most of those third party titles were things like Just Dance, Carnival Games, EA Active, etc. ... stuff that's not a sustainble style of gaming IP that relied on fad trends. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video_games

https://www.ranker.com/list/the-best-selling-wii-games/r20x

Monster Hunter Tri, Resident Evil 4, Red Steel 1 (not 2), Sonic, Epic Mickey, 1 year of the Call of Duty series appear to be among the few major Wii 3rd party games that topped a million that weren't in that dance/fitness/party/puzzle game category. IMO Switch will beat this by the end of its life cycle, probably fairly easily. 

VGChartz doesn't get data from developers, they estimate/guesstimate most of the data on their site, no offence to them, and then fill in the blanks with whatever official data they get here and there. 

The difference with the N64 is you see titles like NFL Hitz, NFL Quarterback Club, NWO/WCW Nitro, Star Wars: Episode I Racer, South Park 64, Turok 1 and 2, hit a million ... that's pretty impressive considering how expensive the games were how the system only had a userbase of 33 million (mostly because Nintendo cut the legs off the poor machine by insisting on cartridge only). 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 11 August 2018

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potato_hamster said:
Third party games are selling well on Switch? Since when?

Sure they're selling better than they did on Wii U, but multi-platform games are in general not selling that well on Switch. EA hasn't even bothered to port Madden to the Switch, and that's almost exclusively based on FIFA sales.

They tend to sell around the level of Xbox One. Which obviously is enough for porting: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=236419



3DS-FC: 4511-1768-7903 (Mii-Name: Mnementh), Nintendo-Network-ID: Mnementh, Switch: SW-7706-3819-9381 (Mnementh)

my greatest games: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

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Alkibiádēs said:
potato_hamster said:
Third party games are selling well on Switch? Since when?

Sure they're selling better than they did on Wii U, but multi-platform games are in general not selling that well on Switch. EA hasn't even bothered to port Madden to the Switch, and that's almost exclusively based on FIFA sales.

So let me see if I follow your logic here... EA won't port Madden to the console because Fifa 18 sales were disappointing (according to you), but why then did they announce Fifa 19 for the Switch? LOL.

Also Bethesda just announced that the new Doom will also be released on the Switch, so they must be happy with how their earlier ports sold on the console. Also I made a post in this thread with plenty of sources that show third party games are selling very well on the Switch.

It's funny how Switch success seems to bother people like you. Makes it all the more fun to me. 

It's more how much managers in both companies like the platform or not. Yes, they have to justify their decisions, but there is as much goal-post-moving and bending as in the forums. I personally would say FIFA did not sell well at all on Switch, compared to the other outings. Still, by now it is most likely past 1 million with digital, and physical will be there at latest with the holidays. And with FIFA ported to other stuff including X360 at which it sold much worse than Switch, it is very hard to argue not to bring another FIFA for Switch. Same goes for NBA2K.

With Bethesda we have the strange situation, that Skyrim sells comparatively better than Doom. Still they decided to bring Wolfenstein and Doom Eternal instead of Fallout, which probably would sell better. I say someone at id really likes the Switch.



3DS-FC: 4511-1768-7903 (Mii-Name: Mnementh), Nintendo-Network-ID: Mnementh, Switch: SW-7706-3819-9381 (Mnementh)

my greatest games: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

10 years greatest game event!

bets: [peak year] [+], [1], [2], [3], [4]

Mnementh said:
Alkibiádēs said:

So let me see if I follow your logic here... EA won't port Madden to the console because Fifa 18 sales were disappointing (according to you), but why then did they announce Fifa 19 for the Switch? LOL.

Also Bethesda just announced that the new Doom will also be released on the Switch, so they must be happy with how their earlier ports sold on the console. Also I made a post in this thread with plenty of sources that show third party games are selling very well on the Switch.

It's funny how Switch success seems to bother people like you. Makes it all the more fun to me. 

It's more how much managers in both companies like the platform or not. Yes, they have to justify their decisions, but there is as much goal-post-moving and bending as in the forums. I personally would say FIFA did not sell well at all on Switch, compared to the other outings. Still, by now it is most likely past 1 million with digital, and physical will be there at latest with the holidays. And with FIFA ported to other stuff including X360 at which it sold much worse than Switch, it is very hard to argue not to bring another FIFA for Switch. Same goes for NBA2K.

With Bethesda we have the strange situation, that Skyrim sells comparatively better than Doom. Still they decided to bring Wolfenstein and Doom Eternal instead of Fallout, which probably would sell better. I say someone at id really likes the Switch.

As per your commentary on FIFA 18 sales, I think it is worth noting the Switch version is not even as feature rich as the others. It sold decent numbers just because it plays well for what it is and not really because it bears the same name as the others when it is clearly not the same game. What is disappointing is that they still did not consider feature parity for FIFA 19 choosing rather to hide behind technical issues with the Frostbyte engine.

NBA 2K18 was initially released as digital only with physical coming only later so that would skew its numbers somewhat but it obviously did enough to get a second outing. The WiiU got only one outing of both franchises so the Switch is certainly doing better saleswise for both franchises.



MajorMalfunction said:
Alkibiádçs said:

Only one game on Switch uses the 32GB cart, so publishing cost isn't more expensive on Switch, except for that one game, that only released in Japan...

16 GB carts cost more than $12, which is what the 8 GB cart costs. It's somewhere between, $12 and $20+, as indicated by the article. Keep in mind, that businesses lives in that margin. Undersell, or overship, as a game company is not a good situation to be in. Another factor is fear, as not all games sell equally to all audiences. If they see that certain types of games don't do well enough,  they act out of fear that they will lose money.

You do realise that Switch carts are essentially same Nand memory like MicroSD, with that on mind, we ca quite sure say that 32GB Switch cart cost less than $10 for publishers. 

Last edited by Miyamotoo - on 11 August 2018

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They do? This kind of thread warrants some proof first. Yeah, probably doing better than Wii U, which was suicide for third parties to develop for, but is it really doing that well for third parties once Wii, DS, and 3DS are taken into account? Has it even reached the number of GameCube third party million sellers yet?



KLAMarine said:
pxrocks said:

Nintendo should diversify their first party more.

Sure, why not?

pxrocks said: 

i cant imagine their all games are cartoony.zelda is cell shaded one.everything else is cartoon.

Thank goodness too. Those are the games that appeal to me: cartoony and colorful.

pxrocks said: 

i think they are doing this for cost cutting.which is a typical thing for Nintendo.

A typical thing for any business to do: cut costs whenever possible and it turns out you can make a great-looking game if you rely on art style over dense textures. You can make it run better too.

pxrocks said: 

every nintendo gamer should start buying more third parties.

I'm doing my part: I own more third party games than first party and last I checked, a healthy number of third party games inhabit high rankings in the e-shop.

I hope every nintendo gamers are like you.because nintendo needs it.third parties are more important than ever and nintendo knows it.

The day when third parties will on nintendo platform start selling more than those typical rinse repeat games aka Mario and Pokemon then we can all say that third party sell well on nintendo platform.until then we can only hope.



potato_hamster said:
Third party games are selling well on Switch? Since when?

Sure they're selling better than they did on Wii U, but multi-platform games are in general not selling that well on Switch. EA hasn't even bothered to port Madden to the Switch, and that's almost exclusively based on FIFA sales.

 

Helloplite said:
They do? This kind of thread warrants some proof first. Yeah, probably doing better than Wii U, which was suicide for third parties to develop for, but is it really doing that well for third parties once Wii, DS, and 3DS are taken into account? Has it even reached the number of GameCube third party million sellers yet?

 

Yes they do, we have numbers, publishers statements, we even have comparison of games on XB1 where around half of compared games sold better on Switch despite smaller install base, not to mention that plenty of Indies stated their games sold best on Switch. 

So we dont talk only about better sales than on Wii U, but better than on 3DS and Wii for current install base,  and even better in plenty of cases than same games on XB1. 

Also we dont talk only about 3rd party games, games are generally selling very good on Switch. 



Alkibiádēs said:
potato_hamster said:
Third party games are selling well on Switch? Since when?

Sure they're selling better than they did on Wii U, but multi-platform games are in general not selling that well on Switch. EA hasn't even bothered to port Madden to the Switch, and that's almost exclusively based on FIFA sales.

So let me see if I follow your logic here... EA won't port Madden to the console because Fifa 18 sales were disappointing (according to you), but why then did they announce Fifa 19 for the Switch? LOL.

Also Bethesda just announced that the new Doom will also be released on the Switch, so they must be happy with how their earlier ports sold on the console. Also I made a post in this thread with plenty of sources that show third party games are selling very well on the Switch.

It's funny how Switch success seems to bother people like you. Makes it all the more fun to me. 

Because it's far cheaper to make another release of FIFA that already exists on Switch than it is to port Madden. FiFA's 18 Switch sales are good enough to justify another FIFA game, but not good enough to justify starting the process of starting the port of an entirely new game. I've been in the room when EA asked my company to take on porting one of the games mid-development cycle on one of their legacy platforms. They literally had a formula they used based on sales reports to determine which platform gets which game, and how much of an investment it justified. But let's be clear, that's just EA's criteria (and this was years ago), and every publisher is different. All I know is the fact is that there is no Madden 19 for Switch means its incredibly likely that EA is not very optimistic about sales on Switch as a platform.

That being said, Bethesda has different criteria for porting games to Switch, as does every publisher.  It's entirely plausible they're willing to accept a profit margin on a title that is below what EA will accept.We also don't know if they have a deal with Nintendo where Nintendo is either partially funding, or discounting  their platform fees in order to facilitate Bethesda's continued efforts.

Third party games are selling "very well" on the Switch based on what criteria? Compared to other Nintendo platforms? Sure. Compared to Sony or Microsoft platforms? Definitely not. Based on the the investments third parties are making in releasing new Switch games after the first year or so of sales? That's a bit lukewarm to be honest.

Why would Switch success bother me? I own one. I also have a pro controller, and over a dozen games, many of which are third party., I *want* the Switch to do well. I *want* third party games to sell well. You don't actually think that anyone that disagrees with how well third party games are selling on the Switch must be a "Switch hater" or anything like that, do you?



pxrocks said:
KLAMarine said:

Sure, why not?

Thank goodness too. Those are the games that appeal to me: cartoony and colorful.

A typical thing for any business to do: cut costs whenever possible and it turns out you can make a great-looking game if you rely on art style over dense textures. You can make it run better too.

I'm doing my part: I own more third party games than first party and last I checked, a healthy number of third party games inhabit high rankings in the e-shop.

I hope every nintendo gamers are like you.because nintendo needs it.third parties are more important than ever and nintendo knows it.

The day when third parties will on nintendo platform start selling more than those typical rinse repeat games aka Mario and Pokemon then we can all say that third party sell well on nintendo platform.until then we can only hope.

Here we go again.

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=229571&page=1#

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=235226&page=1#

tl;dr: the VGC community has bought twice as many third party than first party games.