A friend of mine and a loyal GamingBoulevard fan recently asked me how Nintendo would handle next year’s Switch line up because well, we are getting one of the best line-ups ever in year 1 of a console. So how does it compare to what we know right now?
So let us start by stating year 1 facts. Breath of the wild, Arms, Splatoon 2, Super Mario Odyssey, Xenoblade 2, 1-2 Switch, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Pokken! Need I really say more? Sure, there are two ports of Wii U games, but they are the better ones! Pokken and Mario Kart 8 were great and should be in your Wii U collection already.
Second party games and indies make up for an amazing bonus, Puyo Puyo Tetris, I am Setsuna, Wonderboy, Voez, The ACA games, … Soon this list will have titles like Bulb Boy and Oceanhorn joining the vast amount of non-first party games. Also, let us not forget that one game coming from Ubisoft, the Mario+Rabbids one, which will most likely be a big hit! I should be fair here and mention Azure strikers, Redout, Sonic Mania, Monster Hunter XX (which will hopefully get localized), One piece, …
So yes, year 1 is amazing and I am quite sure anyone would sign for a similar release list for any year to come, so how does it compare?
On E3, Nintendo gave us a sneak peak of some next year’s games and right now, I am calling next year on par with this year.
It was pretty much made clear today that from Nintendo alone, we will get Metroid Prime 4 and that core Pokemon RPG next year (or later), joining the Yoshi and Kirby game. That makes 4 of its best IPs getting new games, including one of the biggest franchises ever, Pokemon.
So why do I think next year will be better? A gut feeling and based on all the information I have seen regarding third-party support. E3 did clearly show that the bigger companies are very interested in the Switch, some actively pursuing new games or ports of their better games! On Twitter, many fans are clearly pushing the big and small companies not to ignore the Switch, most notably lately the Voice actor of Vegeta who publically asked for the Dragon Ball game to be brought to Switch as well!
Nintendo also wanted a big first party game for pretty much every month, leaving several empty spots for next year. Also, many big IPs that do not have a game yet on Switch or at least not announced at the time of writing this article.
Animal Crossing, Donkey Kong, Smash Brothers, F-Zero, Paper Mario, Pikmin, Mother, Luigi’s Mansion, Wario Ware, Captain Toad, … All famous game series currently in limbo.
Let us just imagine 2 or 3 of them are coming, the big money out there being Smash Bros, of course, making next year having equal fighting power (that pun) compared to this year. Pokemon, in my opinion, does outrank a game like Zelda, purely speaking about sales figures.
This obviously excludes the big hitters from third parties and Nindies, but let us be honest, the way the Switch is selling, can they really keep ignoring that part of the market? Right, they should not, the switch is on fire and all aboard the hype train is what I would say.
As a gamer, it is a great time to be alive, many high-end Nintendo games are incoming and it just will not stop next year! Thank you, Nintendo for bringing in the big guns and I look forward to playing them all.
