During the Nintendo Switch generation, Nintendo had no trouble delivering a steady stream of first-party games created using what is likely a reliable pipeline. Often, we have heard how the Japanese company likes to sit on completed games for months, only to release them when deemed appropriate, but this could become a thing of the past moving forward as the Japanese company's studios focus on the Nintendo Switch 2, according to what former employees Kit and Krysta revealed during their podcast.
"That totally happened, though in the past where a lot of these things they just socked away in the Nintendo vault. Like a lot of these remakes, those ports, those are just like done real fast and they'll just sock them away and then whenever there's a gap in the calendar, they'll just release one of those ports," they said in episode 217 of their podcast. "And that's how they kept the Switch life cycle so long, it is because they just didn't really have any lulls because they were able to be so quick and kind of have a batch of stuff ready to go and they would just find the right time strategically to release it."
The realities of developing on Nintendo Switch 2, however, are likely to impact this strategy moving forward, as they have affected third-party developers who have to work around hardware limitations like low RAM. "I don't know how they're doing these days. I feel like they themselves have had a bit of a shock when it comes to development on a Switch 2 and the time it's taking," the former Nintendo employees said. "So now I do wonder, like they may have burned through everything they had in that vault at this point and now they're probably as you know, not struggling, but as pressurized as like a PlayStation to get the next game out and make sure it's developed at the scale that it needs to be for a Switch 2. I feel like they're in a different kind of world now."
As the Nintendo Switch 2 has been on the market for less than a year, Nintendo likely still has a few of these projects that have completed development, ready to launch when required, so it's unlikely there's gonna be a lull in the release schedule for a while. However, it will be interesting to see when the publisher's major IPs like Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda will make their debut on the system with anything other than remakes and upgrades, and if a slowing down of the release schedule is indeed on the horizon.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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