But there haven't really been many (or any) major AAA third party games that have been released brand new on the Switch with their full capabilities. You have old ports from third parties (some of which were AAA games when they came out years ago), you have smaller games from third parties (which doesn't say anything about quality, just saying they're not gonna be blockbuster sellers), you have third party games releasing late after the other systems which means the hype is gone as it is no longer a new game, and usually when you do have a big third party game come out on the Switch so far it is a sports game that has features removed when there isn't any need to remove features other than they didn't feel like doing the work on the Switch version, and besides Nintendo hasn't had a strong sports gaming community since the SNES (and even then Genesis was seen as the better console for sports).

So yeah we haven't seen amazing third party sales for AAA games because there haven't been any of those games yet (and still aren't any announced as far as I know). The third party games Switch has been getting (smaller or old/late ports or indie) are selling well, sometimes extremely well, based on their quality, with sports games selling with a lower attach rate than other systems because all big sports gamers already have a ps4 or xbox for those games. There are probably lots of third party games which have sold between 500k and 1 million when including digital, and probably a decent amount that have sold over a million with digital or only-digital. And for what Nintendo has been getting from third party support so far those are very good figures.

Look at Octopath, not even a AAA game, just a high quality retro-looking game. But it released brand new on Switch (not a late port and paired down version from some other system) and didn't they announce that had shipped + sold digital over a million in just the first four weeks? That could sell 3 million lifetime and turn-based retro-graphics jrpg isn't exactly a blockbuster selling genre. With actual brand new quality releases third parties could easily have a plethora of multi-million selling games, especially as the Switch sales climbs higher up in the tens of millions.

But there haven't really been many (or any) major AAA third party games that have been released brand new on the Switch with their full capabilities. You have old ports from third parties (some of which were AAA games when they came out years ago), you have smaller games from third parties (which doesn't say anything about quality, just saying they're not gonna be blockbuster sellers), you have third party games releasing late after the other systems which means the hype is gone as it is no longer a new game, and usually when you do have a big third party game come out on the Switch so far it is a sports game that has features removed when there isn't any need to remove features other than they didn't feel like doing the work on the Switch version, and besides Nintendo hasn't had a strong sports gaming community since the SNES (and even then Genesis was seen as the better console for sports).

So yeah we haven't seen amazing third party sales for AAA games because there haven't been any of those games yet (and still aren't any announced as far as I know). The third party games Switch has been getting (smaller or old/late ports or indie) are selling well, sometimes extremely well, based on their quality, with sports games selling with a lower attach rate than other systems because all big sports gamers already have a ps4 or xbox for those games. There are probably lots of third party games which have sold between 500k and 1 million when including digital, and probably a decent amount that have sold over a million with digital or only-digital. And for what Nintendo has been getting from third party support so far those are very good figures.

Look at Octopath, not even a AAA game, just a high quality retro-looking game. But it released brand new on Switch (not a late port and paired down version from some other system) and didn't they announce that had shipped + sold digital over a million in just the first four weeks? That could sell 3 million lifetime and turn-based retro-graphics jrpg isn't exactly a blockbuster selling genre. With actual brand new quality releases third parties could easily have a plethora of multi-million selling games, especially as the Switch sales climbs higher up in the tens of millions.

There's room for third parties to make some money here.

Exactly, Switch third party sales need to be viewed in context, namely that almost every significant third party port on the system is late to ancient. The major third parties have made a very half-arsed effort to support the system thus far, and you only get out what you put in.

“After 3 years of releasing no games while we tested the waters, we are disheartened to announce that the platform simply did not garner any sales. Thus we will officially withdraw all support as the customer base simply isn’t there.”

“After 3 years of releasing no games while we tested the waters, we are disheartened to announce that the platform simply did not garner any sales. Thus we will officially withdraw all support as the customer base simply isn’t there.”