Well, so far things seem to be going well for Switch 2. Initial sales appear to be strong, press is largely positive and now at least one analyst says that it’s working well as a 3rd party platform. How true is this and what does “doing well” mean in this context? Read on we’ll discuss.

As reported by TwistedVoxel, this report comes from one Mat Piscatella, Executive Direc- tor and Game Industry Analyst at a company called Circana. According to him, sales of 3rd part games accounted for nearly 40% of physical software sales for Switch 2. This is pretty significant compared to the Switch 1, for which 3rd party games only accounted for 20% of sales at launch. The jump certainly is significant and indeed could mean that Switch 2 could be a good home for 3rd party games, but I’m not so sure.

Let’s not forget that Switch 2 only has one completely new 1st party game right now, that being Mario Kart World. The Switch 1, by comparison had at least three: Super Mario Odyssey, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8. So of course 3rd party games would sell better since there’s less competition at the moment.

Let’s consider also Nintendo’s track record with third party games on their platform. Put simply, it’s not good. Heck the last time Nintendo offered a serious home for major 3rd party games was the Super Nintendo. Every console since then has been some combina tion of too underpowered or too quirky to offer a good home for them. Yes, both the Wii and the Switch hosted mountains of cheap shovelware, but truly good ports of major titles were and (if user reports are to be believed) are still few and far between.

It’s doubtful that Switch 2 will be any less of a “Nintendo machine” than Switch 1, especially since the Steam Deck exists and offers a much better platform for 3rd party titles. Yes, people are playing such games on the Switch 2, but they’re not what people are buying it to play. If I had to guess, as the system’s library fills out, the current sales chunk 3rd party titles are currently enjoying on the system will shrink.

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What do you think of Switch 2? Do you consider it a good destination for playing major 3rd party releases?

Image from the Nintendo website