The NX is no more; enter Nintendo Switch. As of today, the Big N has finally given their mystery device a proper name and even revealed what it looks like, putting an end to over a year of speculation and rumors. If you missed the grand reveal, you can see our coverage of the Nintendo Switch announcement here – we’ve got something else important to discuss.
Never one to try and directly compete with Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo has established itself in recent years as a company that offers an alternative to the PlayStation and Xbox brands by trying new things. The original Wii marked the beginning of this trend by introducing motion gaming to the masses. For a concept that was originally seen as a gimmick by many, it took off almost instantly, turning the Wii into not just a console for gamers, but everyone. For comparison, it outsold both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 during its lifetime.
Sadly, Nintendo’s follow-up device, the Wii U, failed to replicate its predecessors success, having recorded disappointing sales and a severely-lacking catalogue of games. Whether third-party developers found the Wii U’s architecture difficult to work with or just simply not good enough is unclear, but it’s no exaggeration to say that all the big players essentially abandoned the console no more than a year or two after it launched.
The Nintendo Switch represents a clean slate for the Japanese company though, and it’s undoubtedly aware of how crucial third-party support is to the long term health of its new hardware. Thankfully, a whole host of partners have already been confirmed to be supporting the platform, a sample of which you can see below.
There’s many more partners to come, too, but we imagine Nintendo is keeping schtum on some in order to show them off at future presentations and events.
Nintendo Switch launches March, 2017.
