Bring Third Party Support to the Switch
Of course it’s important for Nintendo to provide a strong and diverse first party lineup, but that’s in part to attract third party developers onto their console. A lack of third party titles really hurt the Wii U, and you could even start to see the effect on the original Wii and more recently on the 3DS.
While Nintendo’s titles are widely acclaimed and beloved by fans, they’re just not enough to keep people on a system or convince them to purchase a new one. Considering both the PS4 and Xbox One have been around for years and both built considerable libraries, the Switch definitely has some leg work to do. In the case of the Wii U, there weren’t enough titles early on to really show what you could accomplish with the system and its tablet controller. The Switch, obviously, doesn’t have quite the same gimmick, but it’s still important for Nintendo to lead the way.
During their initial Switch reveal we saw gameplay footage of an NBA game and surprisingly The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. A few days later we found out that Skyrim actually wasn’t confirmed to be on the system, surprising considering it was one of the highlights of Nintendo’s presentation. While bringing big name titles like Skyrim is great, Nintendo needs to make sure that there are brand new third party games coming to the Switch. Part of the problem with the early Wii U lineup was that most of the third party titles you found were things like Mass Effect 3 and Batman: Arkham City, experiences that had already been out on Xbox 360 and PS3 for quite some time.
Early signs for third party support look better at least than the Wii U, with over 30 developers and publishers already on board in some capacity. This list includes companies like Square Enix, EA, Activision, From Software, and much more. On top of that we already know that Dragon Quest XI and the new Sonic game will be heading to the console. Things are looking up for Nintendo’s third party support at the moment, and hopefully they can keep things moving.
