The real boon for indies right now on Switch is that because there aren't a lot of marketing $$$ being thrown at Switch by big publishers, indie content is Nintendo's premium third-party content for the moment and therefore any given indie release is far and away much more visible than a comparable release on PS4 or Xbox One.
This isn't necessarily a matter of "Switch has no games" (Switch is actually hitting a pretty good stride for new game releases), but a matter of "there's not a lot of marketing noise obscuring smaller releases on Switch."
This is the correct read of the situation. Developers and Nintendo itself
acknowledge this openly.
With that in mind, release cadence will be critical. Baker said that they learned from the mistakes of the Wii U, and certainly those 60 confirmed titles won't be hitting the eShop all at once. Staggering releases will not only keep things fresh, but it should aid developers with discoverability on Nintendo's digital storefront.
"If they're granted access into the developer portal and given the tools to develop on Nintendo Switch... We just have that open dialogue with them and try and work on our release strategy so that we can get behind it with marketing and promotional support and make sure they aren't going to get lost in the noise of everything else that's going on," he noted.
We asked Burtis how often he hears from indies who want to pursue Switch. "Nowadays? Pretty bloody often. Beforehand, not so much - I think as more information came out about the platform it got a lot more people excited. Every single dev for games that we now have coming out are like, 'Hey can we also be on the Switch?'... But I think it's definitely a platform that pretty much any indie is going to want us to target.
"Definitely discoverability from our standpoint is one of the biggest things. It's going to be curated for quite a while, so if you can get on there you should be pretty golden. I also think that being able to take such polished games...with you on the go [is amazing]," he added.
"I'll want it to be curated somehow because I don't want to be stuck - that's the problem with Steam right now because I feel like I'm just shovelware. It doesn't matter if there are so many users on Steam, because if you can't reach any of them with all the noise [in the marketplace] it doesn't matter. It's much better to get out on a platform where you can be seen," explained Lyngeled.
Sigurgeirsson added, "There was a time when Steam wasn't so cluttered, meaning that if you as an indie could get your game onto Steam you'd be set. It's really not that indie friendly on Steam any more; it's not even publisher friendly. It's started to resemble the App Store in a way - you have so many titles that almost by definition it's not indie friendly. On the App Store you have a hundred new games coming out everyday - maybe there are a hundred games coming out to the Switch in a year. You're almost guaranteed so much more visibility."
Is this good news for the Switch and indie developers? Yes. Will the Switch likely be the recipient of a great convergence of games that previously aimed for the Wii U, 3DS, and Vita? Also yes. Will some of this situation taper off as the Switch gets older? Likely.
The Switch is an excellent platform for indies, due in part to its hybrid nature, the flexibility of the Joy-Cons/touchscreen, and range of graphical power.
Relax y'all. There's no reason to go console wars on folks that are just giving you context for a situation.
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Was this a trend on Vita as well? I can't remember to be honest. My memories of playing Vita only consists of Persona and the bad Uncharted.
Yes, it happens on many platforms. Vita was fairly strong. Steam and the Apple App Store were great platforms for developers early on, but now those platforms are full of new titles. Having 60-100 million users doesn't matter if those users don't see your game.