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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - How much better or worse will Switch 2's 3rd Party Support be?

 

How much better or worse will Switch 2's 3rd party support be?

Switch 2 will nearly have... 12 25.00%
 
Switch 2's 3rd party supp... 29 60.42%
 
Switch 2's 3rd party supp... 5 10.42%
 
Switch 2's 3rd party supp... 0 0%
 
Switch 2's 3rd party support will be dead 2 4.17%
 
Total:48

What do you guys think?

During the Switch gen you could argue it was Nintendo's best 3rd party support since the SNES. We've had many first of franchises that haven't ever released on a Nintendo console before or in years make their debut on Switch. Looking at the Switch's 3rd party support right now still surprises me and alot of people since I'm not used to seeing games like GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Mortal Kombat, Skyrim, NBA2k, Apex Legends, Witcher 3 and others make their way to a Nintendo console. It's part of the reason its become one of my favorite consoles of all time, all these games available with the ability to play them on the go as well.

The Switch's 3rd party support was far from perfect though. At launch 3rd party support was pretty dry for obvious reasons, many developers were skeptical/doubtful the Switch would do very well after the disaster of the Wii U so many took the "wait and see" approach before they made games for it or used the excuse that "Switch isn't powerful enough". However, once it became clear it was gonna be a smash hit, we saw developers will there way into making games that have no business of running on a 2015 mobile chipset on the Switch, stuff like Doom, Witcher 3, and many others.

However, a good deal of 3rd party support would miss out on the Switch due to its weaker hardware, many current gen/next gen ports coming to Switch were often a hit or miss on whether they came or not, and towards the latter part of the Switch's gen it started to become more like a miss as developers were transitioning to next gen console development, making to gap too big to overcome in many cases. Stuff like Call of Duty, current Assasin's Creed games, Madden, Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption 2, Far Cry, new Resident Evil games, new Final Fantasy games, and many more would miss out on Switch 1.

Where the Switch definitely excelled at the most were older ports of 3rd party games and indies. I felt like the portable nature of the Switch also made older 3rd party ports perfect for the system since it's the perfect system to replay older games in a new way like on the go. I think these types of games did more successful for the Switch than even current gen games since it's a perfect system to double dip on a game without sacrificing graphics, stuff like the GTA trilogy actually was did 2nd most successful on Switch in Europe, better than Xbox One, XBox Series, and PS5 versions of it.

For Switch 2 however, I expect 3rd party support to be even better. Developers already have high confidence it will be a success so from the jump we'll already see 3rd parties make games for it. Microsoft seems to be heaviliy transitioning to multiplatform games so eventually I expect stuff like Forza and Halo to come to Switch 2 which are huge games. We're already confirmed to get COD on the Switch 2 which will help 3rd party support and other stuff like Doom.

I also think porting to Switch 2 even from more powerful consoles will be easier than Switch 1. I feel like tech like DLSS will make the Switch 2's specs more efficient and closer to the capability of its more powerful counterparts than the Switch 1 was. I think the Xbox Series S being a less powerful next gen machine will also inadvertly help developers optimize their games closer to Switch 2.



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Switch 2's third party support should be better than Switch 1 for two main reasons:

- Third parties will be there day 1 this time, whereas last time after Wii U they didn't expect its success and so didn't support it at first.

- More games today are scalable to lower range hardware like the Steam Deck and Series S, so it should be less work to get such games on Switch 2 compared to porting PS4/XBO games to Switch 1.



Oh, and a third reason; publishers nowadays are increasingly releasing on as many platforms as possible to maximise sales and revenue, more so than during most of the Switch's life.



Expect to see much more third party support for big games on Switch 2 as compared to Switch.

After the Wii U, third parties were not starting working on games when Switch came out, so it took years before Switch starting getting even some major third party games, and despite Switch's popularity third parties were extremely slow to decide to start supporting it so support barely picked up throughout the Switch's life. With Switch 2 there are probably numerous big third party games already in development or being ported over as we speak. Plus Microsoft keeps signaling they are essentially starting to go third party and we should see them supporting Switch 2 with some games.

Also Switch 2 should be a bit more capable of handling current console games than Switch was for last gen console games, and add to that likely a bunch of PS4/XB1 ports will be coming Switch 2's way as well, which of course includes current gen games since many console games the past few years were cross gen.

I wouldn't be surprised if within the first two years Switch 2 gets more AAA third party support than Switch had in its entire lifetime.



It will be much better, especially early on. But it's still going to end up missing a lot of major titles.



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Much much better than Switch 1's 3rd party support imo.



It'll be noticeably better on AAA games and about the same for the rest. It should get a ton of old AAA games and a respectable number of new ones at or close to their release.



It will likely be similar, but much stronger at the start than Switch.



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

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It's said to be close to if not on par with a Playstation 4 if I'm not mistaken. Current gen games are barely half a step above last gen and most of them run sub 60fps/1080p. So if Switch 2 is as flexible as the Switch is, it'll be much easier to port a Doom: The Dark Ages, for example.

There's no reason it shouldn't get all current gen and lots of next gen games.



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As mentioned AAA support will see a big uptick but other games not so much since the Switch is already getting heavily supported outside of big games though early on there will be a big difference since the amount of indies in the first year should dwarf the Switch. Anything that runs on the Steam Deck will run on it and stuff that isn't quite there on the SD should also run on it due to its better hardware. It looks like the biggest issue could be the CPU so games that really push the CPU of the current consoles will be the most common ones skipping it which could make a potential GTA 6 port unlikely. It'll still get stuff like COD though which is huge.