 Hey folks, today we're going to talk about something that on the surface seems almost like a small deal, but the more I get into it, it's going to be an even bigger deal and it's a big deal for the Nintendo Switch. So today we learned that Silicon Studio is bringing middleware and engines to the Nintendo Switch. As I said, it seems like a minor piece of news. There's obviously going to be various engines and middleware brought to Switch over the lifetime of the system. Same was true with Wii U, although there was far less of these middleware and engines brought over and the reason that this is a big deal is because middleware and engines is how games are essentially made. They're kind of the backbone of video games. So the more of these that are on the system, the more games that could be on the system because a lot of different studios use a lot of different engines. No, not everyone's using Unity, not everyone's using Unreal Engine 4, etc. There's a lot of different ones out there. And Silicon Studio is bringing the post-script middleware Yibis, Y-E-B-I-S. They're also bringing an all-in-one game engine called O-R-O-C-H-I, or Orochi, which has over 40 dev tools for it. They're also bringing their next-gen engine, which is Xenco, which is X-E-N-K-O, which will be out in April, so later this month. And all are going to be made compatible with Nintendo Switch, and the company has already offered middleware and graphic technology for the Switch SDK. And all of this was brought to light by Nintendo everything. Now here's where this becomes interesting. There are some games out there that have been made specifically with Yibis in terms of Yibis 3, and it is now confirmed that it is Yibis 3 support that the Switch is getting. So it's not just like an older version of Yibis. This is the current version of Yibis as confirmed by the studio who created it. So, here are games that use that, Figureheads, MotoGP15, Ride, and Dragon Ball Xenoverse. Now we know that Dragon Ball Xenoverse is coming to Switch already, however, one game I haven't mentioned yet also uses this engine and really opens the door for possibilities, and it's from a studio that has been confirmed to be doing something on Nintendo Switch, but we don't know what. And the game that supports it is Dark Souls 3. That's right. The engine that Dark Souls 3 uses is now fully supported in its latest version on Nintendo Switch. That's mind-blown. People have been wanting portable Dark Souls for a long time, and now we could possibly get Dark Souls 3, and it could possibly be the trilogy, because we since Nintendo fans have never had a Dark Souls game, you could see a release that has Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3 all packaged together for $60. Nice and clean on Nintendo Switch. That would be insane. And see, this is why this news becomes a big deal, because Nintendo Switch is selling extremely well. It is using architecture that developers are familiar with. Since it's an Nvidia, GPU, CPU combo, it is technology that developers have worked with before, whether it's through the shield, or whether it's just in general with PC gaming. Because what this GPU does, what the CPU does, makes porting to it extremely easy from PC. So when you have a game that you've already developed on a PC, it's not that hard to bring it to the Nintendo Switch, even if you have to cut back on some features. You need to cut back on draw distance, you need to cut back on the level of detail. Maybe you can't have as high of anti-aliasing as you want. But that's all irrelevant. The Switch can run it. It's just going to be, is it running it to a visual standard that you find to be acceptable as a developer. Now, obviously this doesn't mean the Switch is all powerful and is going to get every third party game under the sun. But if this Yebis 3 support leads to Dark Souls 3 coming to the system, that just opens the floodgates. Because the Nintendo Switch is doing very, very well for itself, but it's doing very, very well for itself in general thanks to Breath of the Wild and that potentially being one of the greatest games ever made. And the hype for that is still driving sales to this day. But it needs more. Right? We also got Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with the two and two arms and all that stuff. But it needs a third party games because that's what was missing from the Wii U. I mean you could argue Zelda was missing too if you don't call it remakes. That's besides the point. It needs big third party games and right now I think the biggest third party game it has is Skyrim which is a five plus year old port or you know maybe it's only a year old port if it's the remastered version but either way Skyrim is a pretty old game now and Minecraft which again it's been out forever not nearly a system mover these days. But beyond that what is it NBA 2K18? Is that the next biggest title? I mean there's Sonic Forces I suppose as well. There's not a lot of really big third party titles that have committed to the System Man. Heck we don't even have Call of Duty committed yet for this year. So this could be huge. You could see a Dark Souls 3 coming on over. You could see Bethesda deciding to bring you know some bigger games over. This is huge. I know a lot of third party developers are taking a wait and see approach with Nintendo Switch but in order to wait and see there's got to be something on the system to wait and see with. You can't just be like yeah we're going to wait and see oh Zelda's selling really well oh Mario Kart 8's selling really well oh arms is selling really well and the Nintendo Switch is selling really well but there's no third party games on it to gauge if your game is going to sell. So someone's got to take the leap and you're not going to get a whole lot learned from say NBA 2K18. That's not going to teach you a whole lot except maybe EA could convince EA to bring Madden to the platform. There's already going to get FIFA. Hopefully the full version but I'm just kind of throwing it out there that when you have an engine that supports a major well-known game even though there's another game using it that's going to be on the platform. I feel like this is a perfect opportunity a no excuse opportunity to see Dark Souls 3. It may be the entire Dark Souls series on Switch. The thing is we know the studio behind Dark Souls 3 has already gotten the game to run on Switch because they announced that they got it to run on Switch in some capacity already. So having the full engine supported is only going to allow them an easier time bringing the game to Switch if they can you know if they want to continue pursuing that. And again I think if they bring Dark Souls 3 they have to bring Dark Souls 1 and 2 with so this is a bit of a big project for them to bring all three games to a brand new platform. But it can be done. We saw it with Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 obviously Bayonetta 2 was made for Wii U exclusively but you know it wasn't a hard time for them to bring Bayonetta from the 360 and PlayStation 3 era over. So yeah this is exciting. It doesn't mean anything quite yet in terms of seeing Dark Souls games but it's a step in the right direction. Nintendo Switch is getting things right and they are now starting to get support from graphic engines that Nintendo would have never gotten support for before. So this is awesome. I'm really excited. Maybe I'm overreacting I don't know but this is exciting news to me. And as I said it's going to fly under the radar even though we're talking about it there's not going to be a lot of places talking about it. Man. This is Nathaniel Ruffeljantz from Nintendo Prime signing out.