What a year this has been for Nintendo and the Switch- smarting from the debacle that was the Wii U, Nintendo struck back with an energized new console, launching it with what is, without a doubt, the most impressive first year a console has had- at least this side of the Dreamcast.
Nintendo managed this in large part thanks to an excellent cadence of games- at least one major game was released for the Switch every month after its launch, to the extent that in nine months, the Switch got more major compelling exclusives than the Xbox One has managed in the last two years put together.
And these games were impressive, hitting a whole range of game types, too. Of course, given just how many games Nintendo managed to get on to the Switch in the first year, there have been concerns whether they may not have emptied their chambers upfront. How does Nintendo intend to keep up this pace of releases going forward?
Speaking to 4Gamer (via Nintendo Everything), Nintendo’s Yoshiaki Koizumi (the director of the upcoming Super Mario Odyssey, as well as the producer of the Switch hardware itself) confirmed that Nintendo fully intends on keeping up this pace of releases going forward, and it is structuring its development pipelines up in such a way that it can deliver on that objective.
As of right now, we don’t know much about what 2018 games Nintendo plans on releasing- we know Yoshi and Kirby are confirmed, as is Octopath and Wolfenstein 2. Additionally, there is Metroid Prime 4, Fire Emblem, Pokemon, No More Heroes, and Shin Megami Tensei 5– but those don’t have release dates. Assuming those manage to all hit next year, I suppose Nintendo will have a rather good lineup in 2018, too. We just need confirmations regarding exactly what is coming.
