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posted by on Saturday January 07 2017, @09:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-only-need-mario dept.

As we get closer and closer to Nintendo's January 12 announcement of additional Nintendo Switch details—and an expected March launch for the hybrid portable/home console—we're starting to get more information on what kind of support the system might get from third-party developers.

The most interesting tidbit comes from Laura Kate Dale, who's come through with a number of reliable Nintendo Switch leaks in the recent past. Dale's recent tweets suggest Ubisoft's long-anticipated Beyond Good & Evil 2 will reportedly be "exclusive to Switch for 12 months," and the game will come to Xbox One, PS4, and PC only after that time. That information should be confirmed at Nintendo's January reveal, according to Dale.

[...] Unfortunately for Nintendo, not every developer is as interested in bringing big-name titles to the Switch. In an interview with Oceanic gaming site Stevivor, Bioware's Michael Gamble said he had no plans to bring the upcoming Mass Effect Andromeda to the Switch at this point. However, Gamble did leave some wiggle room: "if the Switch launches and everyone's just yammering for Mass Effect, who knows. We never want to close doors like that."

The level of high-quality support that the Switch receives from third-party developers could be a make-or-break question for the console. Will the upcoming Nintendo Switch be a Wii U-style abandoned island, with no one but Nintendo to make compatible games? Will it be a Wii-style repository of third-party shovelware that lacks competent ports of the big-budget games made for competing consoles? Or will it be a return to the SNES era, the last time a Nintendo home console was unquestionably one of the primary destinations for major games from most third-party publishers.


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  • (Score: 2) by n1 on Saturday January 07 2017, @10:17PM

    by n1 (993) on Saturday January 07 2017, @10:17PM (#450855) Journal

    Will Nintendo make it a viable platform to develop for? The blame for little third-party titles on Nintendo consoles for decades now is entirely a situation they created by making it difficult and expensive to develop for their systems.

    This isn't always bad, Nintendo demands all games released on their platform go through their QA process, which is something most developers don't seem to bother with at all if they can avoid it.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08 2017, @10:38AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08 2017, @10:38AM (#450988)

    Third party developers blame Nintendo because people prefer to buy first party masterpieces instead of third party turds. Sure, it's Nintendo's fault for creating some of the best games on history. If you don't have what it takes to create a masterpiece xbox or playstation is your platform of choice. If you are just a hobby crap programmer head to Android. There's not place for you on a real gaming system. Good quality third party games always sell greatly on Nintendo's platforms. Take the case of Shantae games, for example.

    • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday January 18 2017, @02:28PM

      by Pino P (4721) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @02:28PM (#455407) Journal

      For a hobbyist game developer attempting to become a professional, on what basis should one choose a platform?

      Android devices in wide use tend to rely on a touch screen and accelerometer for input. Positional input from a touch screen works for some genres, such as point and click adventure games, RTS, and shmups, but not all. In particular it doesn't work well for platformers, as I discovered when I downloaded the free version of Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure from Google Play Store, tried it, and found myself missing the on-screen buttons more often than not until I paired a physical keyboard. This is because the player cannot feel the edges of virtual buttons in order to keep his thumbs centered. How many people actually buy a clip-on gamepad?