While Nintendo apparently has a whole lot third party games and companies lined up for the Nintendo Switch, it sounds like we shouldn’t be expecting two of the biggest games of next year, Mass Effect Andromeda and Red Dead Redemption 2, to hit the system.
This is actually something most of us have known for a while- EA have been very cautious and wary of supporting the Switch, only committing to releasing one platform for the system; meanwhile, Red Dead Redemption 2 was only announced for the PS4 and Xbox One. However, Nintendo insider Laura Kate Dale recently went into the reasons that these games will be skipping Nintendo’s system.
As far as Rockstar are concerned, it sounds like they simply do not trust Nintendo’s ability to build a platform where their games would sell. “Don’t count on anything from Rockstar. Rockstar do not trust Nintendo,” Dale said, adding that the inly scenario in which Rockstar may consider a Switch version for their games would be if third party AAA games sales were demonstrated to be good on the platform.
As for EA and Bioware? Well, apparently they are pretty miffed at the Wii U version of Mass Effect 3 not having sold well, so they aren’t big on supporting the system with more of their games. This is, of course, a load of crock- EA and Bioware released a late port of Mass Effect 3 to the Wii U around the same time that they released an entire trilogy collection, priced exactly the same, for other systems. Why would anyone sensible have bought Mass Effect 3 on Wii U, when they could have bought the Mass Effect Trilogy on Xbox 360 for the same price? I can see Rockstar’s reasoning here, that’s fair enough- but EA and Bioware’s reasoning is fishy and suspect.
The Nintendo Switch is currently slated to launch in March 2017 worldwide.