 This video is sponsored by Squarespace, a website creation platform that helps you express yourself online. Grand Theft Auto The Trilogy is on Switch, for some reason. This has come as something of a surprise for many GTA fans, given that Rockstar Games has a somewhat patchy history of publishing titles on Nintendo platforms. The most recent GTA game to grace a Nintendo device was Chinatown Wars all the way back in 2009. The simple answer for why Grand Theft Auto is now on Switch is, of course, money. However, there is more to the issue than this. Rockstar's Dan Hauser has stated before that the company will often pick and choose which Nintendo devices to support based on how much the unique hardware actually interests developers. For example, Rockstar Elected not to develop a GTA game for the Wii, even though the platform had a very large install base. Instead, Rockstar was more interested in the potential of the Nintendo DS. Said Hauser, It didn't feel natural to us, I guess. It really was that the DS felt like it had a lot of interesting challenges that would be totally different from what we'd done in the past. The stylus and the chance to use minigames in that way was really interesting and exciting to us. And we thought we could integrate seamlessly between those two modes. And it would be the chance to make something really good on a handheld with our handheld focused team. That was really why we went that way. We haven't really done any concrete major thinking about the Wii one way or another. They're sort of separate issues. Rockstar did publish some games on the Wii, such as Bully, but the hugely popular console did not get a Grand Theft Auto release. Alas, the Wii U was not quite so appealing to Rockstar, in spite of Regifiza Mei's best efforts to get the company's attention. Before we talk about that, a quick word from this video's sponsor. Squarespace allows you to create clean, stylish websites that look great on both PC and mobile platforms. We made this totally very serious website for our YouTube channel in just a few minutes using the web-based drag-and-drop creator dashboard. We were able to work from an existing template and could add new sections and rearrange the site to our liking with a few clicks of the mouse. We were able to easily embed our videos and add text explaining them. And the result looks very chic. Head on over to squarespace.com forward slash video game story for a free trial and to save 10% on your first purchase of any website or domain, or use the code VIDEOGAMESTORY at checkout. Now, where were we? It's been 12 years since a Grand Theft Auto game released on a Nintendo platform. Although, in fairness, it's not like Rockstar's in a hurry to finish more GTA games in general right now. It's clear that the Switch appeals to Rockstar in a way that the Wii U did not. When asked about releasing GTA 5 on Wii U, Dan Hauser said, Everything else is up for consideration. That's all I can give you. We are a third-party publisher. We're not Nintendo. We're not Sony. We're not Microsoft. We love all of them in different ways. But we can do what we want whenever there's an appropriate business opportunity and chance to find a market. If that's on Apple, we put something on Apple. Wherever it may be. I think that's the fun in what we do. We see ourselves as a content company that uses technology. We don't make it. We use it to make the most fun stuff. Then, Nintendo of America president, Reggie Fesame, was at the time optimistic about the future of Rockstar games on the Wii U. He said, The folks there have said very nice public comments about the Wii U. In the end, it is Nintendo's responsibility to have a large installed base, to have development tools that help the developers and publishers create great content and essentially create an environment where teams like Rockstar can bring their very best content to our platform. And if we do that, hopefully the very best content throughout the entire industry will show up on Wii U. It's interesting to hear Reggie note the importance both of a large install base for the Wii U and having useful development tools available for third-party studios. It's easy to see why Rockstar might want to avoid this console, considering both that it proved unpopular with consumers and that, by all accounts, the development tools were a bit of a nightmare. According to one anonymous third-party developer who worked with the Wii U development kit, having worked on other hardware consoles, I suppose that we were rather spoiled by having mature tool chains that integrated nicely with our development environment. Wii U, on the other hand, seemed to be trying at every turn to make it difficult to compile and run any code. This anonymous developer also claims that the documentation for Wii U was minimal and that every time they asked a hardware question of Nintendo, they had to wait a week for the query to be translated into Japanese, emailed to the hardware developers, then translated back into English. All of this being the case, it's no wonder that Rockstar decided to sit out the Wii U era and focus on less frustrating platforms. A big part of the reason for the Switch's success is that, compared with the Wii U, it's far more developer-friendly. This has led Rockstar to release LA Noir on the platform previously and it makes Grand Theft Auto Trilogy a logical next step. The port was developed by Grove Street Games, formerly known as Wardrum Studios, who have been involved with many Rockstar ports in recent years. Some of these ports have been well-received, others, not so much. It remains to be seen at the time of making this video how the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy's Switch port will be received. One way or another, this could be a pivotal moment in the ongoing relationship between Rockstar and Nintendo. The moral of the story is that communication helps inspire creativity.