In theory, Nintendo has a bevy of major games lined up for the year—Yoshi’s Crafted World, Daemon X Machina, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Animal Crossing, Luigi’s Mansion 3, and Pokemon 8, among others. However, in reality, only Yoshi has a release date, and that’s two months from now. In terms of concrete confirmations, Nintendo’s 2019 slate looks worrying right now, especially after the recent delay of Metroid Prime 4, leading to concerns that 2019 may end up being as back loaded as 2018 was.
However, according to Daniel Ahmad, analyst at Niko Partners, there should be no such worries. Speaking on ResetEra, Ahmad noted that Nintendo has a very varied slate of first party games lined up for this year, and that we should be hearing some concrete release details from them very soon.
“I don’t think people should be too concerned about Nintendo Switch’s pipeline for 2019,” he said. “First quarter is certainly a bit light, but we’ll get release dates and news for other titles coming in 2019 fairly soon.
“Nintendo’s first party line up for 2019 is fairly strong and also a bit varied which is good to see. It’s just Nintendo will require all of them to be received well because first party titles are one of the main drivers for Switch [at the moment].”
He also spoke about what Switch owners can expect in terms of third party support for the Switch, which will largely be more of the same—just better.
“Third party will be more of the same. By that I mean do expect ports of older titles. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the amount of ‘new’ third parties (that aren’t family / JP games) won’t be that different from last year. Certainly a few big surprises this year though.”
A combination of a strong first party lineup, and third party ports, sounds exciting enough. Now to see when Nintendo actually unveils its plans for the remainder of the year. Just Yoshi won’t help them stay on top of the sales charts.