Over this weekend, I made the argument that the Nintendo Switch being weaker than the Xbox One and PS4 really shouldn’t matter as much in terms of third party support– the reason that the Wii and Wii U lost third party support wasn’t because they were weak as much as because they were too different to develop games for, which combined with the weakness made many developers flat out give up. As long as the Switch uses industry standard development environments and tools, it should retain third party support.
We already know that the Switch does just that- after all, it is using development tools designed by none other than Nvidia. And now, in an interview with GamesTM (via Nintendo Everything), Zen Studios VP of Publishing Mel Kir has shared the same sentiment.
“Most developers have had experience working with Nvidia’s tech at some point. Their tools and tech are really easy to integrate, so yes, I think this makes the Switch platform much easier if not better to develop for than Wii U,” he said.
Hopefully, this ends up holding true- the Switch looks to be an extremely promising system, and if Nintendo handles it right, it could end up going down as the quintessential system from them. Let’s just hope the third parties stay on board with them, too.