Topic: Are the Joy-Con the reason the Switch has so many fighting games?

You may have noticed that a lot of Fighting games are coming to the Switch. The Neo Geo Arcade Archives, as well as the Street Fighter collection from Capcom, SNK has a few like SNK Heroines and Samurai Showdown, Indie titles like Pocket Rumble and Fantasy Strike. WB with Mortal Kombat 11, Arc System Works with BlazBlue and Classic Guilty Gear plus DBFZ and Kill La Kill IF, To even Nintendo's own ARMS and Super Smash Bros. The only games its missing are Tekken 7, Soul Calibur VI, and DoA6. This is the most a Nintendo console has gotten from the genre since at least the Game Boy Advance. But I feel the biggest reason for the surge of Switch fighters has to do with the console's hardware, specifically, the Joy-Con. Yeah, they may not look like, or be the best fighting game controllers. But their shareable nature, limited travel distance of the sticks, and the mobile nature of the Switch itself lends well to the genre's arcade roots since it's like taking an actual arcade cabinet anywhere you go.

Of course, Fighting game pros will always want to opt for a Fight Stick or at least a D-Pad controller since those will always be the best options for actual competition. But for some less serious competition or quick fun with friends, they're perfectly fine. I actually think the Switch is the first console that can give the genre more popularity since as I mentioned earlier, it's the modern equivalent of an arcade cabinet due to the system's portability and versatility of the Joy-Con, allowing the experience to be more social and active, just like the arcades. It also helps that Fighting Games are one of the easiest genres to run on low end hardware due to their simple nature and generally lower graphics fidelity compared to other games, so most of them can be ported to Switch with only a couple sacrifices while still preserving frame-rate.

I guess publishers may have considered them to be a good option for spontaneous tabletop sessions. The Switch is also the most versatile in respect to control schemes, so there's that as well.

I just wish we'd get the DoA games on the platform, starting with DoA5.

I was tempted to buy it on PC, but I don't think it supports the Switch Pro Controller, and it doesn't even have a config settings for full-screen play (the resolution is locked, so it appears windowed on a 1080p display). Absolutely stupid. Apparently there is a solution, but it sounds horribly convoluted and requires editing game files.

DoA6 plays fine, however, but I suspect that Tecmo will rerelease it at some point, so I do not wish to buy it at this stage, especially as they are locking new characters and outfits behind multiple AU$130 packs!

I just think that alot of fighters might be just easy to port over from other platforms as the ones we have are largely not too graphicly intense. Plus there's no huge files involved, so they could be ported quickly.

It's because the Switch is the number one selling console at the moment. And to be honest IMO it doesn't seem like it's getting more fighting games than any other genre RPG'S, SHMUPS, ROUGES, ECT. ECT. Only thing the Switch is lacking in is non kart racers.

You mentioned the lack of Tekken 7, Soul Calibur VI, and Dead or Alive 6. It's also missing Street Fighter V.

SFV is tied up with it's PS4 console exclusivity, so I didn't count it. The games that are missing are the ones that could theoretically run on the Switch at a good enough level.

I think the biggest reason for the number of fighting games is simply that the genre has seen a serious resurgence of popularity recently and the industry just likes bandwagons. Look at how many battle royales have happened since Fortnite got popular. Same idea. Something gets popular and more people do it.

The joycons may be a factor, but I think it comes down to the success of the console and portable nature of fighting games. 3DS got quite a few fighting games at first (DoA Dimensions, Street Fighter 4, Tekken 3D) but slow sales of the console in it's early days hurt sales of those games so it stopped there. Switch sells lots so games sell lots and we keep getting more.