One of the biggest problems faced by the Wii U, was its lack of third party support. When low sales numbers became apparent and faced with difficulties for porting on the underpowered system compared to the Xbox One and PS4, many companies simply pulled out of Wii U releases altogether. That really hurt the console and it's something Nintendo wants to avoid with its upcoming Switch.
This should be good news for Nintendo fans, as the current lineup of launch titles for the system is pretty weak. There is a new Zelda game, Breath of the Wild, but other than that, everything that debuts with the system is either a mini-game or a rehashed arcade title.
Moving forward though, Nintendo says we can expect much more from the system.
During a call with investors, creative director Shigeru Miyamoto said that there will be a lot more third party games on the system and said that those making games for the PC, will have a much easier time porting them over.
"Third-party developers who are making software for PC can now easily adapt that software to work on our platform", Miyamoto said. "In the current development environment, Iʼd say that it would take less than a year for them to port a PC game to Nintendo Switch."
Other interesting takeaways from the call, include the fact that the 3DS will not be discontinued on the launch of the Switch and will exist alongside it, at least for the time being. We also learned that Nintendo has been working hard to learn the Unreal Engine and believes its first-party teams are good enough now that they will be able to make a number of games using it.
Get ready for high-end visuals on the Switch if that turns out to be true.
