To show that the Nintendo Switch will indeed have a broad swathe of games available, and to assuage worries that the system will suffer the same lack of 3rd-party support for Wii U, Nintendo’s released a list that includes all of the publishers currently planning on providing support. It might come as a surprise that the list includes virtually every major publisher, and a large quantity of small-to-medium sized publishers as well.
Keep in mind that a publisher indicating support does not always directly lead to a game being released, or to the degree of support that many would like to see. At worst, it at least means that a publisher has acquired development kits for the platform and is evaluating what kind of support they can provide. On the other hand, indicating support like this is the first step towards fully investing in the Nintendo Switch.
Here is the full list of over 50 partners that have indicated their support for the Nintendo Switch:
505 Games Activision Arc System Works ATLUS Autodesk Bandai Namco Entertainment Bethesda Softworks Capcom Codemasters CRI Middleware DeNA Electronic Arts Epic Games Firelight Technologies FMOD FromSoftware Frozenbyte GameTrust Grasshopper Manufacture Gungho Online Entertainment Hamster Corporation Havok Inti Creates Koei Tecmo Konami Level-5 Marvelous Maximum Games Nippon Ichi Software ParityBit PlatinumGames RAD Game Tools RecoChoku SEGA Silicon Studio Spike Chunsoft Square Enix Starbreeze Studios Take-Two Interactive Telltale Games THQ Nordic Tokyo RPG Factory TT Games Ubisoft Ubitus Unity Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Web Technology Corp Wwise
The big publishers a prospective Nintendo Switch buyer would want to see on that list are all there. Western publishers Activision, Electronic Arts, and Ubisoft are accounted for, as well as Japanese publishers Bandai Namco and Square Enix. In fact, there are very few big publishers missing at all. The most notable are perhaps Deep Silver and Aksys, though Deep Silver passed on supporting the Wii U at launch as well.
Ultimately what matters is what games each publisher will be bringing to the Nintendo Switch, and just a scant few have been announced so far. Just Dance 2017, NBA 2K17, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, and a couple of Dragon Quest titles don’t signify broad third-party support, but it’s absolutely evidence of an impressive trend. Publishers are willing to talk about supporting the Switch before the Switch had even been announced. There’s a lot worth looking forward to for Nintendo fans.
The Nintendo Switch is planned to launch in March 2017.
