As we all know, big western AAA studios are mostly developing on ESports GaaS and technological demanding games, for which releases for the Nintendo Switch will be sparse at best. For this reason, the best western third party support we can expect for the system will come from the indie scene, which is not a bad thing, and we can already see a healthy ecosystem developing for the console.
However, as the thread title suggests, there are some pieces that don't quite fit in the current landscape for the Switch to become a fully welcoming place for the indie scene, and I would like to discuss them with GAF community. Feedback from actual indie dev GAF would be greatly appreciated
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(Limited)Access to the development kits.
Various indie developers have reported limited access to development kits. This came to my attention after fellow GAFer, Robert at Zeboyd Games, reported that his company was apparently denied one when requested. It was specially sad for me, as he seemed to be very excited by the console when released. Another victim of this seem to be A Hat in Time.
The reason for this seems to be an obscure policy of no ports during the first six months, curation and short supply of the actual development kit hardware.
Engine Support, Specially from the Growing GameMaker
The Switch got UE4 and Unity, but its missing UE3, CryEngine and GameMaker support. Many projects are still using UE3, A Hat in Time is one of those, but I get that Epic wants to move on. I have no idea how important is CryEngine support is for the indie scene, but its important to note that, while it was there day one for the WiiU, there seems to be no road-map for Switch support. Is it the hardware or just a change in priorities? Anyway, Crytek is not the same company as years past.
Now, from my perspective, the most interesting case is GameMaker. The originally hobbyist engine that got console support in 2014 and has spawned many indie hits in recent years. Two of them are Hyper Light Drifter and Undertale. The first one had even pledged a Wii U version that had to be canceled after "Nintendo and Yoyo games (GameMaker company) failed to reach an agreement".
So, the question is, which kind of agreement? On the thread about the cancellation , we had two dev GAFers with opposite views: either Nintendo wasn't interested or Yoyo games wasn't interested in the Wii U version. But no concrete reason on what kind of deal we are talking about. With some googling it found a thread that, IMHO, has the answer: Yoyo games was looking for Nintendo to fund the porting option, and Nintendo seemingly declined. Is this a normal request? At the linked thread, a Yoyo games representative seems to argue that if MS and Sony paid for it (is this true?), and Nintendo was willing to pay for Unity support (is this true?), then is not an unreasonable request. That was for the Wii U, have things changed with the Switch? The official answer on part of Yoyo games is
Which is as close to a non-answer as you can get.
I personally don't see Nintendo paying. Will someone eventually budge?
However, as the thread title suggests, there are some pieces that don't quite fit in the current landscape for the Switch to become a fully welcoming place for the indie scene, and I would like to discuss them with GAF community. Feedback from actual indie dev GAF would be greatly appreciated
. (Limited)Access to the development kits.
Various indie developers have reported limited access to development kits. This came to my attention after fellow GAFer, Robert at Zeboyd Games, reported that his company was apparently denied one when requested. It was specially sad for me, as he seemed to be very excited by the console when released. Another victim of this seem to be A Hat in Time.
The reason for this seems to be an obscure policy of no ports during the first six months, curation and short supply of the actual development kit hardware.
Engine Support, Specially from the Growing GameMaker
The Switch got UE4 and Unity, but its missing UE3, CryEngine and GameMaker support. Many projects are still using UE3, A Hat in Time is one of those, but I get that Epic wants to move on. I have no idea how important is CryEngine support is for the indie scene, but its important to note that, while it was there day one for the WiiU, there seems to be no road-map for Switch support. Is it the hardware or just a change in priorities? Anyway, Crytek is not the same company as years past.
Now, from my perspective, the most interesting case is GameMaker. The originally hobbyist engine that got console support in 2014 and has spawned many indie hits in recent years. Two of them are Hyper Light Drifter and Undertale. The first one had even pledged a Wii U version that had to be canceled after "Nintendo and Yoyo games (GameMaker company) failed to reach an agreement".
So, the question is, which kind of agreement? On the thread about the cancellation , we had two dev GAFers with opposite views: either Nintendo wasn't interested or Yoyo games wasn't interested in the Wii U version. But no concrete reason on what kind of deal we are talking about. With some googling it found a thread that, IMHO, has the answer: Yoyo games was looking for Nintendo to fund the porting option, and Nintendo seemingly declined. Is this a normal request? At the linked thread, a Yoyo games representative seems to argue that if MS and Sony paid for it (is this true?), and Nintendo was willing to pay for Unity support (is this true?), then is not an unreasonable request. That was for the Wii U, have things changed with the Switch? The official answer on part of Yoyo games is
Which is as close to a non-answer as you can get.
I personally don't see Nintendo paying. Will someone eventually budge?
