The big surprise has been just how enthusiastic Bethesda, a company that preciously didn’t even acknowledge Nintendo much, has been about the Nintendo Switch. From the initial Switch announcement (where Bethesda’s Skyrim was one of the first games ever shown for the system), to just last week, when the company also announced that it will bring DOOM and Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus over to the hybrid system, it has been amazing seeing just how on board and all in on the Switch Bethesda appears to be.
There have been many who have speculated about the extent of Bethesda’s support for Nintendo over the long term- however, speaking to VentureBeat in a recent interview , Bethesda’s Pete Hines said in no uncertain terms, that the company intends on supporting the Switch for a long time to come- and beyond just these three games.
“Honestly, it’s been a long series of [conversations]”, Hines said. “They came out to see us before they unveiled the Switch to show us what the hardware was like, what they were doing with it. We’ve been in constant conversation with them, and not just about the two games we have now, but about our whole approach to the platform going forward – what we can do, best practices, what things are a good fit, what they’re excited about in what we’re doing. We’re obviously excited about these two games, but it’s not as if we’re going to just do these two games and that’s it. We want this to be the start of a relationship that we build with Nintendo and Nintendo fans.”
This is a very good attitude to have- the Switch’s audience, buying in because of games like Zelda, is a fundamentally core audience, and is missing some more mature and sophisticated themed games because no other publisher has taken a chance on the system yet. By going all in on the Switch this early, they are sure to reap the benefits over the long term by building up a new set of fans that they might not have had before. And as everyone knows, if there is one thing Nintendo fans are known for, it is brand loyalty.