 So, A-List Daily got to sit down with Nintendo's Doug Bowser to ask him a slew of questions about Nintendo and the success of Nintendo Switch, Zelda, Mario, Splatoon 2, lots of interesting stuff in this interview. But what really caught my eye, what I want to bring to your attention, is how third party support from indie developers all the way through AAA developers has evolved since Nintendo Switch was announced and had its full unveiling back in January. So here is how A-List put the question to them. So last year, after some people were counting Nintendo out after the Wii U, but the Switch is clearly an early hit. What went right this time? Doug Bowser responds, Well, we're pleased with the results so far. There clearly is demand for the product, and we think it's a combination of factors. First of all, it's the uniqueness of the platform itself. That it's a home console that you can pull out and take on the go and play in a variety of different styles. Then there's the ability to play in different modes with different controllers and with different numbers of players. When you get to the portable nature of it with tabletop mode, you can stack a number of switches around the tables so everyone can compete against each other with different perspectives either on one device or each of their own respective devices. That unique playing proposition is what's been driving the demand to this point. And then it's about the great content. It started with Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, which was attaching pretty much one to one to every unit sold. And then it continued on with titles that we've launched since then, like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. So it's the combination of unique hardware propositions and some great games that people are looking forward to playing. A-list goes on to ask them. EA has a separate team working on a special FIFA soccer game for Switch. How is the early success of Switch getting third-party publishers interested? Doug Bowser responds, back in February, we announced that we had 70 developers or publishers building 100 games since that time. Each of those numbers has more than doubled. And it runs the gamut from Indies all the way to major publishers. At the E3 press conferences, with the exception of Sony, everyone mentioned Nintendo Switch. Even our friends at Microsoft talked about some of the cross-play opportunities. That's an indication of support. And we thank them and we look forward to it. So what we get is finally an update on where Switch support stands today. As we sit here in the early parts of July and we look towards what's happening for Switch to the rest of this year, what could be happening in 2018 and beyond. Because as awesome as a Switch has been performing, a lot of people still tie that performance to the success of Breath of the Wild. So where is the Switch support coming from? Well, according to Nintendo, it's coming from everywhere. Now, they said they had 70 developers publishing 100 games. This includes Indies. And if you actually look at the eShop, I think there's something like 50 or so games in the eShop, not counting the Neo Geo classic stuff. I'm just talking about like new Indie-type games, triple A games from Nintendo, B tier games, etc. But 100 games, wouldn't you include Indie developers in that? That's almost an overstatement, I suppose. Because a lot of people think, oh, is the Switch getting games? They don't really think about the Indie titles per se, even if they should. Because Indie titles are fantastic. If you look at some of the Indie titles that Switch has, like Mr. Shifty and Snake Pass and just dozens and dozens of others, they are exceptional games that, while not necessarily at the level of, say, a Breath of the Wild, they also don't cost $60. So they shouldn't be expected to be at that level. But it's very interesting to hear them say that from Indie developers to triple A developers, they have more than double the developers in games being built. That means at least at the time of this interview, which I assume happened back during E3 in June, it was said that basically the Switch has more than 200 games in development from more than 140 different development studios. And here we're talking about third-party studios. We're not talking about Nintendo's internal teams. That is, that's good. Even if it turns out that 175 of those titles end up being Indie titles. It's still really good news that the Switch is going to have a continuous stream of content, even if a lot of that content is digital and in the Indie scene. It's still a good sign for Nintendo that they are getting this support. Now, obviously, we here at Nintendo Prime Care deeply about major triple A third-party support. And still, we don't know what the Switch is going to have on that front, right? We know about a game that's getting from Ubisoft and Starlight. We know about, you know, NBA 2K, which I'm very interested to see how that performs, because I don't to this day, I still have not seen 100 percent footage of what that game looks like on Switch. So I'm really interested in what it looks like, how it performs in the market. Because according to 2K, we are getting the full version of 2K18, not kind of a watered down version that we're getting of FIFA, even though it's fully customized and looks better than I expected it to look. It doesn't use a frostbed engine. It's missing features. And that's not what's happening with the 2K18. It's it's the fully featured game. So I'm really interested to see how that does. I am interested, believe it or not, to see how Skyrim performs because these kind of games performing well, studying aside, FIFA, these games that are actually putting like big efforts into making them look good, making them run well and making them have feature parody with other versions of the game. These are the games that are going to determine whether or not there's going to be future support. Like, are we going to get an NBA 2K19 next year? Well, 2K18 has to perform. Are we going to get potentially mad? And well, FIFA is probably going to have to do well. And I know that that that's kind of hard, hard to say. FIFA is like the most popular soccer game in the world. But I still don't think switch users are getting the true treatment from EA that we deserve, even if it turns out the game is better than expected. And yes, it might be the greatest handheld FIFA game of all time. But listen to what Doug Bowser said. This is a home console that you take with you on the go. We don't want the best handheld version ever. We want a home console parody version. And we already know Frostbite Engine can run on Switch. So it's a little weird that they just didn't put in that extra effort to make it happen. But anyways, there's always next year, right? I am very interested, though, to see what other third parties are currently on board. Obviously, we know what Mario and Rabbids coming out later this year. But what else is Ubisoft besides Starlight have coming? You know, is Beyond Good and Evil 2 going to be a switch game? You know, we already know for sure it's coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and PC because when you sign up for their little beta program thing, those are kind of the platforms it talks about. But they went on to specify that final platforms have not been decided. And it's wholly possible it is going to come to Switch, which might not be part of the beta program, which is OK. Or maybe isn't part of it at this time. And Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still, you know, two, three years away from even seeing the light of day in terms of an actual release. And that's assuming this doesn't happen like last time or we got a cinematic trailer and then the game vanished for like 10 years. So let's not counter our eggs before they hatch on that game. But what I just want to know from all of you is how do you feel about this? The idea that there's at least 140, if not more, developers working on games. And these are a mix of indie to AAA and we're talking over 200 games in development right now for Nintendo Switch. Does this excite you? Is it possible for the system to exist if it doesn't get the major AAA publishers like all the big games, the call of duties of the world as an example or the battlefields and the battlefronts and all the massively popular games if it doesn't get those? Is it OK for the Switch to kind of exist as this machine that gets collaborative third party games like Marion Rabbits or Fire Emblem Warriors or even a port of Hyrule Warriors, etc. So you get these collaborative projects with a few trickled in AAA games. You know, like like what we're seeing now, NBA 2K. And, you know, we're seeing it with Starlight and whatever that other game is. FIFA and, of course, Skyrim. So you see these games trickled in. But if you get this trickle, plus you get heavy indie support. And if there's one thing I appreciated about the Wii U, it had solid indie support, but I already feel like in this short lifespan of the Switch, we have had a higher percentage of high quality indie games coming out at a very consistent pace. And I want to know if that's good enough. If this kind of direction for the Switch is good enough for you. Obviously, I have my reservations. I think Nintendo needs to find a way whether it's paying them to do it to get major third party games in the platform. So I think at the end of the world, day end of the world, the end of the day, we all want all the games on Switch, right? Every third party game that's multi-platform we want on Switch. All the indie games we want on Switch. We want everything and we know reality is that's never going to happen, right? Not as long as PlayStation 4 owns the market, not as long as the people who own PlayStation 4 and Xbox One continue to buy like 20 games a year. We need to start looking at what kind of market can the Switch create for itself here? Now, I've argued in the past and you can see it in a video above that the Switch is a pretty hardcore market. And I still stand by that today, despite some people who made some valid counter arguments. And maybe I'll do a follow up video to that in the future. But I just feel like Switch's audience is in a good spot right now. And I feel like we're not just the Zelda audience, right? Right? If you look at sales data week to week, we have multiple Switch games in the top 10 all the time. It's not just that Zelda console. I know that's the reputation Switch has, but are indie games enough? Is what Nintendo has coming enough? And again, we know the 2017 lineup is great. We know of a handful of titles for 2018 that look like they're going to be good. Yoshi, Kirby, Fire Emblem, you know, potentially Metroid Prime 4 or Pokemon. I just want to know, isn't enough? Are we in a good spot? And is it possible that the Switch becomes the next 3DS? Where maybe we don't get the AAA games, but we get those secondary offerings from people like Square Enix, you know, a bravely default kind of game. And is this the kind of direction you'd like to see the Switch head in? Let me know down in the comments below. If you like this video, you know what to do. If you dislike it, hit that dislike button. And again, I apologize for being over a week or so since I've made a video like this, a more discussion oriented, newsy kind of video. But I've been busy. It's my birthday tomorrow, actually, or not tomorrow, Wednesday. I don't know, whatever it is after July 4th, that's my birthday. So I've been busy, had some some surveys over this past weekend. But we did get the podcast back last week. It is not here again this week. Remember, if you want to make sure that podcast comes out every single week, head to patreon.com slash Nintendo Prime. Once we would hit our $100 a month goal, you will be able to have that podcast every single week guaranteed. And if you submit $5 towards Patreon, you do get early access to that podcast every Sunday, where you get the full audio podcast uploaded directly to our Patreon backers. Also, you can support us in other ways. We've been doing more live streams lately and I'm trying to raise some money to get new camera equipment, new microphones. I want to start doing more on screen stuff, not not as many of these videos where I'm just talking and I put up some still images. I actually want to get on camera and do a higher quality presentation for you guys, not just during our podcast and even our podcast itself really needs some help. We broke our microphone a couple of weeks ago. It's made me really eerie about recording more podcasts, only one microphone. And the microphone I'm using now isn't really good for for podcast stuff. It's good for individual recordings, not like multiple people in the studio. Anyways, I am Nathaniel Ruffo-Jance from Nintendo Prime and I'll see you in the next one.