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

Jumpin on 10 August 2018
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.



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Mnementh on 10 August 2018
bubblegamer said:
The bigger third party titles are missing. And the ones selling, are helped by less competition on the system.

That's why the 3rd-party games on WiiU sold that incredible.



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Mnementh on 10 August 2018
MajorMalfunction said:

TheMisterManGuy said:

Now of course, Switch obviously isn't getting every AAA third party title, it's still a tablet with clear limitations. But it's still a powerful, well designed piece of kit that speaks not just to Nintendo fans, but to the gaming audience as a whole. And that's why third party games are doing so well on it.

I need receipts. Octopath has broken 1 million, Skyrim has broken 1 million. Almost 20 million sold and only 25 third party games breaking a million is not an indicator that games universally sell well on Switch. I'll give you Nintendo games, no doubt, but third parties are high and dry for the most part. IMO, it's not getting every third party title because it doesn't make sense when you account for opportunity costs of money and development man-hours. It's going to get some third party games that sell well, and some that don't. The market will correct and stop making products that don't sell.

Mario+Rabbids is past the million. FIFA has about the same physical but probably better digital sales than Skyrim. And Minecraft has pretty sure barrelled past the million with the downloads. Now adding physical sales to the pile. How is it for 5 3rd-party titles?



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!

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Mnementh on 10 August 2018
MajorMalfunction said:
TheMisterManGuy said:

You don't need to sell a million to be successful. It all depends on development costs of the game and how much needs to be sold to break even. Many indies on Switch were considered a massive success at only 250-400k. Capcom considered Ultra Street Fighter II's 400k sales to be a hit. 

Indies are generally lower-cost endeavours wrt. developing and publishing. 400K sales is a hit SF2 because it's thirty years old. AAA doesn't give a shit. They make 27 million off 1m sales. Publishing is 20m upfront, net profit is 7m. Same revenue on PS4XB1, but you only spend 12m. If you're a business, what would you choose? Unless the market is saturated, I cannot in good conscience pick NSW. It just doesn't make sense to me. We haven't even spent a cent on development and NSW is already far behind in terms of opportunity cost.

Why does publishing cost nearly double on 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]

MajorMalfunction on 10 August 2018
Mnementh said:
MajorMalfunction said:

Indies are generally lower-cost endeavours wrt. developing and publishing. 400K sales is a hit SF2 because it's thirty years old. AAA doesn't give a shit. They make 27 million off 1m sales. Publishing is 20m upfront, net profit is 7m. Same revenue on PS4XB1, but you only spend 12m. If you're a business, what would you choose? Unless the market is saturated, I cannot in good conscience pick NSW. It just doesn't make sense to me. We haven't even spent a cent on development and NSW is already far behind in terms of opportunity cost.

Why does publishing cost nearly double on Switch?

Cost of carts mainly. All three take a chunk of sales as revenue (licensing). These costs are unavoidable, but for NSW, a 32 GB carts costs $20 or more / each. 8GB carts are in line with what MS/Sony charge for BD-50s used by XB1/PS4. 16 GB carts are in the middle. I did not include development costs, as those vary with engines, development teams, etc. You can get  a firm number by limiting to publishing costs only. On Wii U, Ubisoft went on the record saying an Wii U port was about 1m euros, but that was in-house. That's old information, but we later found out that no content changes were done, only code through leaked info. I didn't include this information because it varies by game and port choices (in-house vs. out-sourced).

EDIT: source on cost of carts: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/09/feature_exploring_the_switch_tax_and_why_nintendo_was_right_to_use_game_cards

Last edited by MajorMalfunction - on 10 August 2018

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Alkibiádēs on 10 August 2018
MajorMalfunction said:
Mnementh said:

Why does publishing cost nearly double on Switch?

Cost of carts mainly. All three take a chunk of sales as revenue (licensing). These costs are unavoidable, but for NSW, a 32 GB carts costs $20 or more / each. 8GB carts are in line with what MS/Sony charge for BD-50s used by XB1/PS4. 16 GB carts are in the middle. I did not include development costs, as those vary with engines, development teams, etc. You can get  a firm number by limiting to publishing costs only. On Wii U, Ubisoft went on the record saying an Wii U port was about 1m euros, but that was in-house. That's old information, but we later found out that no content changes were done, only code through leaked info. I didn't include this information because it varies by game and port choices (in-house vs. out-sourced).

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...



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MajorMalfunction on 10 August 2018
Alkibiádçs said:
MajorMalfunction said:

Cost of carts mainly. All three take a chunk of sales as revenue (licensing). These costs are unavoidable, but for NSW, a 32 GB carts costs $20 or more / each. 8GB carts are in line with what MS/Sony charge for BD-50s used by XB1/PS4. 16 GB carts are in the middle. I did not include development costs, as those vary with engines, development teams, etc. You can get  a firm number by limiting to publishing costs only. On Wii U, Ubisoft went on the record saying an Wii U port was about 1m euros, but that was in-house. That's old information, but we later found out that no content changes were done, only code through leaked info. I didn't include this information because it varies by game and port choices (in-house vs. out-sourced).

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.



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potato_hamster on 10 August 2018

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.



duduspace1 on 10 August 2018
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.

This is becoming less of a problem as the percentage of players opting for digital versions increase.

And anyone still asking for proof that 3rd parties are selling well on the switch only need ask themselves why the Switch is getting 2nd outings of both FIFA 19 and NBA 2K19 as opposed to the solitary outings both of those got on the Wii U or why DOOM Eternal is getting a concurent release on the Switch along with other versions. Looks like some people just want to avoid reality as long as possible.



Alkibiádēs on 11 August 2018
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. 



"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides