Now that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is out, a lot of people are looking forward to the next big thing from Nintendo. A lot of people are calling it “the last major game” that is going to release on the system. Looking past how this ignores Pikmin 4, which is a very rare case of Nintendo themselves making a single player game in this era, there is almost certainly going to be another “major” game coming to the system. Additionally, looking back only a few years shows that the end for the Switch is many years away.
The 3DS
Even though the 3DS is only about half as popular as the Switch based on hardware sales, Nintendo didn’t end production of it for over 3 years after the Switch came out. That last year definitely wasn’t heavy on software, but it definitely didn’t just fall off a cliff right after the Switch came out. In fact, we were still getting notable releases until partway through 2019.
This is all despite the 3DS definitely not being as developer friendly as the Switch. If developers really wanted to, they could much more easily support the Switch with its ability to run widely used engines and its industry standard resolution and controls. Just look at the PS4, which came out in 2013 and is getting a version of the 2023 game Street Fighter 6, which is a game that is going to be played for another 5 years at the very least. Generations are getting longer, and the Switch isn’t going to be left out of that. Even though it is the weakest system on the market, which may cause some development issues, it is the current best selling one, so it makes perfect sense to keep supporting it beyond the release of its successor.
Speaking of “major” games, the 3DS got one many months after the Switch came out: Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.
Pokémon
Pokémon has a long history of supporting consoles beyond their successor’s release. Gold and Silver work on the original Game Boy, Emerald didn’t leave Japan until the DS was out, Black and White 2 arrived on the DS over a year after the 3DS was already out, and most recently we had the aforementioned Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon on 3DS long after the Switch had already come out. Considering this has happened every time (or at least 75% of the time, if you don’t want to count Emerald), it is pretty safe to assume history is going to repeat itself on (so far) Nintendo’s second best selling system of all time.
This should be something to look forward to for the people who are concerned with console lifecycles as well. Presumably the successor to the Switch is going to be able to play similar games and have better specs. That means whenever the next generation drops, we can expect to see a version for both the current Switch and whatever its successor is. The Switch version will probably be full of the same performance issues and graphical limitations a lot of people complain about, while the new hardware should be able to brute force it to run better. It may even get graphical upgrades assuming Nintendo is able to convince Game Freak to do that to help sell the new system and the game to owners of that system.
This would be (realistically, is going to be) a great arrangement for everyone involved. The Pokémon Company is going to have a sufficient player base to release to, the vast majority of Pokémon game fans who already have a Switch and don’t mind the performance issues will be able to buy it there, people who buy the new hardware will get an upgraded version with fewer issues, and Nintendo gets to support two systems at once with a major game.
No Need to Get Ahead of Ourselves
Nintendo still expects to sell a sizable amount of Switch consoles this year, and there is good reason to believe it has major software support ahead of it. A sizable transition period between systems is nothing new to Nintendo, and nothing to be worried about for us either. 2017 through 2019 were some pretty great years for Nintendo games despite them simultaneously supporting the Switch and 3DS. We can expect to see something similar in the upcoming years as the Switch goes into its 7th year on the market and beyond.
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