Take-Two Interactive Reiterates Support of Nintendo Switch, But Won't Confirm Games Yet

I'm sure they'd be happy to make GTAV portable, but would they make GTA6/RDR2 on it?

I can't imagine we'd ever get Rockstar games on it, but I would be legitimately excited for a port of the Bioshock collection, as it would mean portable Bioshock, something we were promised but never got on the PS Vita.

@Ralizah Highest ranked DS game on metacritic is a Rockstar game.

I hope they've something other than basketball.

@gcunit Which sold so poorly that it probably made them leave Nintendo. Was a good game but the market just wasn't there unfortunately.

It's the exact same statement. Again.

Not really related but I'm kind of scared that switch will be just ps3.5. I really want more of DS/3DS type of games, but so far it looks like just having ps3 on the go.

@gcunit Almost everyone had a game on NDS, since the thing was a cultural sensation that almost literally printed money. In general, Rockstar has kept its distance from Nintendo platforms.

Besides, Chinatown Wars was massively pirated, if I remember correctly.

@Spoony_Tech @Ralizah But Chinatown Wars was a bespoke portable 'spin-off' type game, not a numbered entry in the main series. If Switch is capable of running Skyrim Remastered then I'm confident it can run GTAV, so if it can be ported easily why wouldn't they? Switch will be more attractive to the GTA audience than DS was.

GTA 7 and Red Dead Redemption 3 confirmed!

Now we just need confirmation of Half Life 4!

there were some gta games for the nvidia shield using the tegra x1, borderlands too, just not sure which versions. if they switch read dead redemption 2, they might as well switch the first two games while they're at it. no mass effect 3 with no previous entries like on wii u.

@gcunit For the same reason a numbered GTA never showed up on any other Nintendo console?

I could be wrong, but Rockstar has almost religiously avoided releasing games on Nintendo hardware at this point. Chinatown Wars was the exception, and it didn't sell well, which is unheard of for a GTA game in this day and age, spinoff or not. Why risk an expensive port of GTA V?

If it does come to Switch, though, I might sell my PS4 version. Portable GTA V sounds like utter heaven.

@Ralizah How do you know the port would be expensive? If Switch can run Skyrim Remastered then it seemingly is the most straight-forward console for porting 'PC/Console games' that Nintendo has ever produced. Porting GTA 3/4 to Gamecube/Wii is likely an incomparable concept to the idea of porting GTAV to Switch.

Chinatown was made specifically for portable, and was top-down, not 3D, so didn't carry half of the pull of a mainline GTA game.

@gcunit GTA is a huge game, and we don't know how hard it is for devs to develop for the Switch. Also, Skyrim Remastered hasn't been confirmed for release, and wasn't actually running on the Switch in that trailer. Let's not count our eggs too soon.

There is no chance the games in the trailer aren't at least in development. It makes zero sense headlining your marketing like that with no follow-through.

Proof of concept or not, for the trailer, those games will be released. I can't see this being a Dreamcast style marketing bugger-up.

@Ralizah "Portable GTA V sounds like utter heaven" - yeh, maybe Rockstar are having the same thought...

I'm not counting eggs, I'm just speculating that portable technology will always have a healthy market (until we become permanently fused to our couches/desks) and so if Switch can do ports relatively easily, why not?

NBA 2K17 was released in September. If they say it's coming to the Switch it will be a 5 month old port, which was the criticism the Wii U got with it's 3rd party lineup.

If however 2K are planning to put 2K18 (and I think next year's WWF game would fit as well), or there was a 2K NBA Switch edition that didn't suggest it was a port (bunging Mario hats on everything isn't a solution), then it would give people who own the PS4/XB1 2K17 a reason to buy it on the switch.

It seems pretty obvious that Nintendo have an agreement with these third parties to STFU until January 12th.

@ErnisDy What's preventing developers from making (3)DS style games for Switch?

@CTMike I agree, the trailer was clearly aimed at young adult core gamers, who are the very ones who would call BS if those games never materialised. It would be marketing suicide.

That is fine. For now as long as they pledge support I'm cool. Now once the NS comes out then I'll start looking at them with expectations in my eyes.

Edit: I hate you auto correct.

Maybe all this stuff might be mentioned on January 12th but everyone seems to be rationing scraps of info as news till then.

First, we did not see Skyrim ported to the Switch and played natively. More than likely we saw gameplay rendered to video.

Second, we don't know how easy or costly it is to port games. Being able to run a particular game is very different from developing a game. This is not an x86 architecture. How much RAM is available to devs? What type? What are the multi processing details for this specialized CPU? What API and development support is Nintendo providing? Lots of details that we don't know but can greatly affect port costs and efforts.

@8itmap_k1d The mindset of developers and players. I'm scared that we will have a bunch of your standard AAA console games and A or AA games will suffer because of that. Where on 3DS voiced dialogues and cool cut scenes and amazing graphics are not expected, so we get these great experiences gameplay wise, on a console like switch these games might suffer because they are against AAA games with way bigger budgets.

Think about SMT IV on 3DS, what if it was released on PS4, so competing against Fallout, Skyrim, Final Fantasy, Mass Effect and other stuff with way bigger budgets. Suddenly your menu based town explorations and one sprite npc's with no voice acting are lame as Nibelsnarf and you can't ask full price for that. So the budgets would need to be raised, and with bigger budgets there's more risk so a lot of more unique and interesting stuff wouldn't get funded at all.

@ErnisDy I see what you're saying, although I believe the success of the indie sector has tempered those expectations somewhat. Some of the best games of the last few years on consoles and PC have been pixel art, and without voice acting. Digital distribution means that there's a real renaissance in smart, smaller scale games, which would be perfect for portable devices.

I don't care if it is a port of NBA 2K17, I want up-to-date rosters in an NBA game on a Nintendo system.

@8itmap_k1d Yeah, but again if I use SMT IV as example, it's not really indie and it's too big to actually be 15$ eShop release. It sits in between indie games and AAA games, and I'm scared that with Switch we will lose these in-between games.

The problem behind the lack of AAA western 3rd party support on Nintendo's systems is two fold:

Ever since, like, the GCN era, people that tended to buy Nintendo systems did not also buy the 3rd party titles that came out on them. It then became a thing to promote "you buy Nintendo systems for Nintendo games" and so that eventually became reality as well, a belief even eventually adopted by developers after their sales reflected it.

The other reason is that Nintendo themselves stopped giving 3rd parties reasons or incentives to bring their titles over in the ways that Sony and MS have (to a rousing success, mind you) and so this has also hindered 3rd party relations.

Bottom line, the reason there's no support is because of Nintendo fans and Nintendo themselves. 3rd parties, more importantly, are not to blame at all whatsoever.

@gatorboi352 Well, no, I think third parties are to blame to some extent. When a company releases a lazy, inferior port on a Nintendo console, do you really blame Nintendo fans for not buying it? Western third parties, by and large, treat their Nintendo customers like trash.

Of course, they only make lazy ports because they think Nintendo fans won't buy them anyway, so it's kind of a vicious cycle.

There is also the problem that people who buy stuff like Call of Duty and basketball games probably already own a PS4 or Xbone to play them. Those sorts of games aren't going to have wide appeal with Nintendo fans.

Obviously they have nothing in the way of games to show right now, it's probably all going to be show on January 12th when Nintendo reveals everything about the console.

As for the games Take Two has, I would love to see GTA V (haven't played a GTA since Vice City on PC, would love to play another game in the series), of course NBA 2k17 because I love basketball, and I would like to also see Bioshock Collection come to Switch, because that series is just fantastic!

January 12th can't come quick enough, same with March 2017! It's like my Christmas begins a 1/4 of the way into next year lol

@Ralizah Chinatown Wars bombed also on the PSP. The reason it failed is a generational thing. It wasn't because it was on a Nintendo console. Most people that play GTA started with III or newer, they don't have an ounce of love for 2D topdown view games.
I liked the game because I started with GTA 2 but I'm getting old.
We are yet to see how the Nintendo fanbase would react to a fully 3D GTA game, sadly. And I'm not too confident that we'll see it on the Switch, either. Rockstar doesn't understand Nintendo.

NBA 2K17 and the Bioshock Collection seem like the most likely games from them.

glad to hear that they are partbering

Deja vu!! Reading over articles from 2012 before the WiiU launch and then todays where developers are also "waiting to confirm" takes me back in time.

Reading pretty much the same comments about that same statement are also spooky.

Let time tell.

@Ralizah "Western third parties, by and large, treat their Nintendo customers like trash.
Of course, they only make lazy ports because they think Nintendo fans won't buy them anyway, so it's kind of a vicious cycle."

Ah but part of the reason for the rushed ports are the lack of incentives ($$$$) and/or lack of co-operation from Nintendo themselves, going back to my first point.

It's no mystery that by and large Nintendo has had historically bad to mediocre 3rd party relations. They will partner extremely close with a select few on some exclusives but that is it.
A recent example of "omg lazy devs" that people like to reference is Splinter Cell on Wii U, how its MP mode was missing local co-op. Ubisoft (the last 3rd party that should ever be accused of phoning it in on Nintendo consoles) literally said it was cut due to their dev resources having to be focused on the GamePad specific elements. Again, not their problem, Nintendo's problem.

I've had a ton of fun playing NBA 2K13 on my Wii U. I bought it when it released and I still play it. It's a great game. If they had continued releasing them on Wii U, I probably would have bought 1 more. If NBA 2K17 or NBA 2K18 comes to switch I will absolutely buy it. I'd to be able to play while going on long car trips (I let my wife drive and I play 3DS currently)

The critics are stupid sometimes, they (Take Two) show teaser footage of their game on the Nintendo Switch trailer to tell consumer that they are supporting the console, not necessarily mean that they will bring an NBA 2K rehash to the system. It's the same reason Square Enix show a Final Fantasy VII remake demo on the PS3 before it launch.

WWE 2k on the go and I'm sold 4 Life

I'm sure Jan 12 will shed some much needed light on many developers intentions to support the Switch.

I really hope they don't do an article like this for every single one of the developers listed as partners for the Switch... it's obvious that none of them are allowed to confirm any games for it until Nintendo let them (probably when they do the big presentation in January)... so there's no need for an article every time one of them confirms it.

Yes as expected everyone's chucking in a game to see if it sells! Wii U launch was similar, mass effect, dark siders, batman, 2k, need for speed, sniper v2, COD, Rayman, Fifa, sonic transformed, Etc. Etc. Let's wait and see where things are a year or two down the line!