by Here's a curiosity: the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles spent years in cross-gen territory, with relatively few game studios choosing to abandon the significant PS4 and Xbox One install base in favour of the new machines. Yet for the Switch 2, the tap for Switch 1 development was quickly turned off, with full-fat Switch 2 game production well underway by the time the console reached the one-year mark. Why?
That was the excellent question posed by DF supporter Yotsuya in DF Direct Q&A #277, who wanted to know what special sauce Nintendo has employed to seemingly skip the inevitable cross-gen period and move straight onto the new machine.
It's all about the relative leverage that each console maker has over their respective markets. In the case of Sony and Microsoft, despite a healthy (or not-so-healthy) stable of first-party studios, the majority of game sales lies with third-party developers who want to maximise their return on investment - which means targeting current and last-gen machines together.
For Nintendo, the situation is reversed, with a majority of game sales on the platform coming from Nintendo itself - and that makes it a lot easier to switch over wholesale. They're willing to take the short-term hit on game sales for Switch 1 in order to ensure that the Switch 2, likely their flagship platform for the best part of the next decade, is as successful as possible, reaping the benefits later down the line.
It also means that their Switch 2 games are genuinely designed for that platform exclusively, leading to higher-quality results and more daring features - it's hard to imagine Mario Kart World's increased player counts and larger stages scaling down to Switch 1 hardware, for example.
And if Nintendo stops producing Switch 1 games and exclusively pushes Switch 2, then that helps kickstart the new console generation, pushing more players to upgrade - and thus allowing third-party game developers to make the same rapid transition with confidence that the new system's install base will grow rapidly.
This truncated cross-gen period is just one element of Nintendo's full-throated belief in traditional console generations too, and it bookends neatly with its reticence to discount games after launch, its continued production of physical games and its focus on exclusive titles. Microsoft and Sony don't have the same luxury, and as we can see, their entire business has changed as a result.