Speaking to Famitsu (and translated by NintendoEverything), Electronic Arts Executive vice president Patrick Soderlund Patrick Soderlund praised Nintendo for paying close attention to third party studios while designing its upcoming Nintendo Switch console-handheld hybrid.
"I only spoke about FIFA today, but our company’s structure lets us release all sorts of games for every platform, so we’ll go wherever the gamers go. I think Nintendo Switch will put Nintendo at the forefront of the game industry once again. Their approach is quite different from anything they’ve done in the past – they’ve listened to EA, Activision, and other companies since the beginning of the Switch’s development, so we’ve been involved throughout the whole process. They teamed up with us because they wanted to guarantee the console would be successful. Doing business with Nintendo is very important for us… We’d like to bring more and more games over for everyone."
Nintendo is known for treating third party games as an afterthought on its platforms. The original Wii was dominating the market by a landslide yet all major publishers practically ignored it. Before the Wii U was released Nintendo claimed that it had secured support from some of the largest publishers, but those promises didn't hold true - perhaps because the console came in a distant last in market share behind PS4 and Xbox One.
The Nintendo Switch is set to launch on March 3rd, 2017; at which time we will find out whether Nintendo was able to hit the sweet spot between consoles and mobile gaming or merely provided an answer to a question nobody asked.
