Former Nintendo marketing leads say the Wii U flopped so bad that getting third-party support on Switch was 'really hard,' but the Switch 2 marks a new era: 'There's no more proving you

Switch 2 will be a renaissance for third-party support on Nintendo platforms, two of the company's former marketing leads predict.

The Nintendo-shaped podcast Kit & Krysta, hosted by ex-Nintendo employees of more than 10 years, Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang, recently posted an episode explaining why they have "full-blown optimism" about the Switch 2 and, in particular, its potential for third-party support. The duo was around for Nintendo's struggle to attract third-party publishers on the Switch following the commercial failure of the Wii U, and they break down their excitement for the Switch 2's third-party support into two main points. The first is that "the Switch 2 is a new system, but its concept is proven."

"People understand what a hybrid system is," says Ellis. "There's been this rise of Steam Deck and Steam Deck-ish devices. We've got the PlayStation Portal. People are really comfortable with this idea of, 'yeah, there's this thing that can play games on a TV but it can also be played handheld.' That's not a hurdle for people to get over."

The other main reason Ellis and Yang reckon the Switch 2 will be an attractive prospect for third-party publishers is that Nintendo essentially redeemed itself after the Wii U flopped with the OG Switch, which is now one of the best-selling game consoles of all time.

"The transition from Wii U to Switch 1 was pretty tough from the Nintendo third-party side," says Yang. "They were coming off of a console that was, quite frankly, not successful and a failure, and getting third-party support on a Nintendo platform at the time was really hard. We were there, we watched it happen."

While I will always ardently defend the Wii U from a strictly hardware perspective, I will also freely admit that there's perhaps no greater redemption arc than Nintendo's transition from Wii U to the original Switch, which just recently cleared 150 million units sold in stark comparison to the Wii U's abysmal 13.5 million lifetime sales. Ellis and Yang don't mention sales explicitly here, but they're definitely implying that the success of the Switch and third-party sales on the platform have paved the way for more to come on the Switch 2.

"There's no proving yourself to these big third parties anymore. You've proved yourself," Yang says. "So now they're in a much different place where so many of these huge third-party developers are really clamoring to be part of a Nintendo platform, to have access to this massive Nintendo audience ... it's really exciting times for third-party support on Switch."

Ellis also adds that it wasn't just the Switch's console sales that gave third-party publishers confidence in the platform's potential beyond first-party releases. It was also various wins on the software side of things that "disproved" the well-worn narrative that Nintendo players only care about Nintendo games.

"There are so many great proof points that go all the way from big AAA games down to [indies and third-party games] like Monster Hunter Rise for Capcom, that was a big seller that was exclusive," says Ellis. "The version of Hogwarts Legacy ... that version was very popular and sold well. And then you had so many examples of indie games saying, 'yeah, I'm on a lot of different platforms but actually the Switch version was the one that did the best."

We still don't know much about the Switch 2's software lineup, with the only confirmed game at the moment being the new Mario Kart title. We have seen a credible report claiming the long-awaited remaster Metal Gear Solid Delta and a handful of Ubisoft games like Assassin's Creed Mirage are part of Nintendo's third-party plans, but nothing's been confirmed.

Thankfully, we're about to learn a lot more in the April Switch 2 Nintendo Direct.

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