As we get closer and closer to Nintendo’s January 12 announcement of additional Nintendo Switch details — and an expected March launch for the handheld/home hybrid console — we’re starting to get more information about what kind of support the system could get from third parties. – party developers.
The most interesting tidbit comes from Laura Kate Dale, who has endured some reliable Nintendo Switch leaks in the recent past. Dale’s recent tweets suggest Ubisoft’s highly anticipated Beyond Good and Evil 2 will reportedly be “12 months exclusive to Switch” and the game won’t be coming to Xbox One, PS4, and PC until after that time. According to Dale, that information should be confirmed during Nintendo’s reveal in January.
Ubisoft has been one of the biggest proponents of the Switch, with the company’s EMEA director Alain Corre telling Japanese magazine famitsu in November that Ubisoft has “high hopes” and is planning “a wide range of software” for the system. Ubisoft is also a big believer in recent Nintendo systems; the inventive Rabbids series and best-selling just dancing after all, both started on the Wii.
That said, a one-year exclusivity deal for a game as expected as Beyond Good and Evil 2 would be a major coup for Nintendo’s new system. The innovative action adventure Beyond good and evil became a cult classic in the years since its low-key release in 2003, and an official sequel has been on the back burner since 2008. instant extra interest in the Switch from a certain segment of the game world.
Unfortunately for Nintendo, not every developer is equally interested in bringing big names to the Switch. In an interview with Oceanic gaming site Stevivor, Bioware’s Michael Gamble said he had no plans to Mass Effect Andromeda to the Switch at this point. Gamble left some wiggle room, though: “if the Switch launches and everyone is just whining” Mass effect, who knows. We don’t want to close doors like that.”
The level of high-end support the Switch receives from third-party developers may be questionable for the console. Will the upcoming Nintendo Switch be a Wii U-style deserted island, with no one but Nintendo to make compatible games? Will it be a Wii-esque repository of third-party shovelware that lacks competent ports from the big budget games made for competing consoles? Or will it be a return to the SNES era, the last time a Nintendo home console was undoubtedly one of the main destinations for major games from most third-party publishers.
Nintendo, for its part, emphasized third-party titles such as NBA2K and Skyrim in the Nintendo Switch announcement trailer in October. In addition to that announcement, the company also posted a huge list of third-party partners for the system. But many of those partners are actually middleware technology makers, and similar (if smaller) lists were rolled out for the launch of the Wii and Wii U. Ultimately, both consoles ran into trouble maintaining remote support, so whether developers holding time could be the key to Nintendo’s future success.