Topic: How does the Switch's third party support stack up to other Nintendo handhelds?

@Krull Astral Chain and Marvel UA3 are first party

Actually, Nintendo owns Astral Chain and Marvel UA3. Second party as a concept doesn't exist. You're either first party or third party, no real in-between.

With the Switch also doubling as a home console, the need for custom-based versions of console games no longer exists, since you can just downscale the PS4/XBO assets and resolution. What will be coming to the Switch more so, is the current rise of Mid-budget games developed with the system in mind like Mega Man 11 or Gods and Monsters.

I think part of the issue with 3rd party series these days is that they don't want to put the effort in to making something different. They can make one game that, with only minor adjustments, can be released on PS4, Xbone and PC. But for the Switch it simply requires a lot of extra work, or needs to be a completely original title.

Despite the fact that the Switch is still selling well and has a pretty large install base at this point, I don't think they consider the extra effort of totally reworking their games, or building original games to be worth it.

That's where the rise of mid-budget games will come in. With AAA games becoming less frequent, publishers are increasingly turning to smaller scope projects to supplement them. The future of third party games on Switch from these people will be multi-platform games developed with the system in mind. You can see that with stuff like Crash: Team Racing Nitro, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Starlink, Mega Man 11, Oniaki, Gods & Monsters, and several others.

@TheMisterManGuy Disney owns the rights to Marvel. You had better believe they get a percentage of every copy of MUA3 that is shipped. Astral Chain is first party, yes. I said "most" of the mentioned games were second party, did I not?

Edit: P.S. - And Bayonetta is thoroughly second party. Sega allows Nintendo to finance the games.

Marvel Games are tricky. While Marvel holds the rights to all the characters and settings used. The rights to the actual games themselves belong to their respective publishers. Sony for example, owns Spider-Man PS4 as a game even though the rights to the character belong to Marvel.

I'll just walk-back my previous post and link this video, for educational purposes.

How about mid-budget titles. Many publishers are starting to develop these smaller AA titles with the Switch in mind. Such as Crash Team Racing and Gods and Monsters.

How do we rate the difference between AA and AAA games? Feels pretty subjective now that I think about it.

AAA games are heavily marketed, highly expensive games with a budget of at least $30 million. AA games are lower-budget, less marketed games with a budget of around $5-15 million. AAA games tend to be very safe and easily marketable with high production values and graphical fidelity. AA games tend to have much less graphical fidelity, are a lot smaller in scope, and tend to take more creative risks, while still having higher production values and scale than a standard indie game.

@TheMisterManGuy Is this your opinion or is this some established benchmark? Why are $30 million and $5-15 million the magic numbers?

It's just the way I see it. It's admittedly subjective in a way, but this is what I personally evaluate it as.

@TheMisterManGuy Hmm alright then. Fair enough.

Their handheld support if anything is like the DS's but with far more focus on notable hardcore games. Since DS is literally the most successful gaming device of all time, that's a good sign. Actually thinking about it though, I realize I never think about 3rd party Gameboy games. Maybe GBA to an extent, but non-Nintendo games for the older Gameboys is either a huge gap in my knowledge of gaming or was the best time for Nintendo to not need major 3rd party support. Even the games I know of, feel like obscure hidden gems no one played when they were new. Like I assume people bought those Gameboy Megaman games when they were new because they made so many, but no one talks about them as if they actually did back in the day like they do with the console Megaman games.

Honestly Switch's 3rd party support has been consistently interesting to me as a long time Nintendo fan. I think Switch's 3rd party support is (in the context of how gaming is now compared to the past) easily the best since the SNES on consoles. Though obviously it is objectively the best (barring Wii/DS shovelware era maybe) in terms of quantity because of how many games exist now. I actually think its interesting how this happened, since Nintendo failing at 3rd party support has been the narrative (and to be fair, at least partially an accurate one) since I started going on internet message boards over 15 years ago. From my perspective, it feels like everything came together at once to help them.

1. Nintendo Switch being a very successful system
2. Nintendo Switch being the first console on the level of success to any of their competition since the SNES without also heavily relying on the casual audience (to the point that Wii got a somewhat unfair reputation about supposedly lacking good games beyond that, but that's a rant for another day).
3. Early 3rd party Switch games being very successful, even for games that often wouldn't be otherwise
4. The gimmick inherently being appealing to gamers beyond typical Nintendo fans who buy every system
5. Unintentionally(?) being the spiritual successor to the Vita, which relied on 3rd party games since Sony forgot to release games on it after a year or so
6. Having Japanese support right when Japanese games were making a big comeback*
7. Western publishers' over-relying on the same games instead of releasing a larger quantity of new ones, thus meaning Switch had less major games to even miss out on*
8. The gap in power between consoles being increasingly irrelevant

*these two things are likely connected tbh

@kkslider5552000 Can you explain to me what you mean by your 3rd point in greater detail? "Early 3rd party Switch games being very successful, even for games that often wouldn't be otherwise" I am genuinely curious.

Well there weren't many Switch games early on, and many of them got sales well above what I would've expected from them. Since they included a Bomberman game with extremely meh reviews and otherwise mostly ports of niche and obscure games that were not great sellers even on PS4. Like any well reviewed Switch game you would find at a store in the first few months probably sold at least half a million by now. Probably more.

Compare that to the Wii U, where every actually major 3rd party game that had previously sold 5 million+ copies elsewhere were lucky if they got to half a million on Wii U ever. Like I'm pretty sure you can say that Disgaea 5 outsold COD: Black Ops 2 in this one instance of "the version that came to a Nintendo console".

There is no way that the Switch will have the AAA 3rd party support like on PS4 and Xbox One mainly because the developers first develop for the platforms with more resources.

For the Switch they need to put more effort MAINLY for optimization which is the bane of modern game development. Nowadays devs are rushed to make games quickly and they have like 8GB/12GB of ram and better processors available to splurge.

If they put the rushed games on the Switch they will probably never even get to the main menu.

It feels subjective because it is. It is much better to use other words, because you can never know how others perceive the label.

I’m happy with the third party support, but I do think people buy Nintendo consoles for the Nintendo games. I’m sure Witcher 3 is a good game, but I don’t think it will do very well on Switch. Games like Crash N Sane Trilogy are perfect for the Switch, but I’m not that bothered about other third part releases

It's an interesting topic. The third party games that can be ported to Switch do very well, but many current-gen games simply can't be ported, for reasons others have stated. Indie games tend to do much better on Switch than other consoles. The exclusives Nintendo has been getting also tend to do very well. Unfortunately, most big third party games are developed with the PC in mind, which is a mentality these companies have had even going back to when EA was young and shunned the NES for the PCs of that day (which was a very stupid decision as it turned out).