While the Nintendo Switch has seen some great support on the first party and indie front, third party support has been a little slower than expected. However, it’s picking up, with games like Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Dragon Ball FighterZ and others on the way to the system.
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While speaking with the Verge, Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime addressed the matter, noting that the process of seeing games ported over from other platforms to the Switch will go a lot smoother in the months ahead. “We’re talking today about a platform that is 16 months old. The development cycle today is multiple years. So I would argue that beginning at the end of this year, or next year, that gap will have closed. Because key developers have had the development systems, they’ll have been working to create content for our platform from the beginning. That’s what is going to close that time gap,” he explained.
And while the hardware isn’t as advanced as, say, the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 in terms of architecture and performance, there are third party developers that are finding ways to make the games work like a charm. For instance, Bethesda enlisted the talented developers at Panic Button to make Doom and Wolfenstein II run effortlessly on the system; and other studios, like Arc System Works, are handling the work directly, assuring that their games not only run remarkably well on the portable front, but also in docked mode.
And while Fils-Aime didn’t confirm it, another factor that could work in the system’s favor is the potential of a much larger cartridge size. The company has been talking about making the move to a 64GB capacity cartridge in the next year, up from 32GB. It would certainly make the need to download extra data onto the system itself to get the game to run a thing of the past, which would be good news for gamers overall.
We’ll see what Nintendo announces in the months ahead, but it’s making every effort to assure that third party companies are bringing the best games to its system. So far, so good — especially with Fortnite‘s arrival on the platform.
The Nintendo Switch is available now.
