What’s Going On With Switch 2 Dev Kits?

The Switch 2 launch was certainly peculiar. While we received all the bells and whistles like new controllers, accessories, games, and updates- we also received far too many questions.

And now here we are months after the launch, and things feel just as strange. Lately, there’s been more than a handful of reports of Nintendo being quite stingy with Switch 2 development kits. Normally dev kits are handed out months or even a year prior to a console launching. This helps ensure developers being able to capture launch hype with some new games that showcase the systems capabilities. But we sadly didn’t get much of that this time around. Instead, we got tons of updated ports in the launch library.

Most concerning is the recent chatter on episode 228 of Digital Foundry’s podcast (around the eight minute mark). In this episode, it is mentioned that multiple developers have spoken out about how difficult is it to acquire a development kit from Nintendo. There are even some murmurs that Nintendo is actively encouraging devs to keep making Switch 1 games.

This is of course disappointing to hear, but not surprising at all. Sony showcased similar behavior during the jump from PS4 to PS5. Instead of drawing a line in the sand and declaring the PS4 days over, Sony released multiple cross-generation games for years after release. The hardware manufactures have realized that when you sell as many machines as PS4 and Switch 1 did, it doesn’t really make any financial sense to completely abandon the system so quickly. But when you do this, the people really losing out are the hardcore fans. The very people who support these companies at launch lose out on generation defining games for quite some time.

It seems like Nintendo is being persnickety with which games are using Switch 2 features. An odd example is Squanch Games’ High on Life getting a Switch 2 update that uses the mouse functionality of the joy-cons. Another interesting example is Oink Games and their game Chillin’ by the Fire which uses GameChat. No disrespect to either of these games, but neither of these really scream “I need a Switch 2 for this!” But they both use Switch 2 features, which explains why they got Switch 2 dev kits before other studios did.

Unfortunately, this is impacting other studios that…ahem..quite frankly deserve them more. Games like Ninja Gaiden Ragebound and Shinobi Art of Vengeance both suffer from poor performance on Switch 2. And if you’re like me, the Switch has become your Nintendo first-party and indie machine. 2D indie games feel right at home on Switch. So seeing the aforementioned games running poorly on Switch 2 is disheartening. Especially because I doubt these studios will have the time to go back and update these games properly. Something tells me that Nintendo doesn’t really care about how these third party games run. They care mostly about the features of their console, which has been their attitude for decades now. Many games on DS, Wii, and Wii U didn’t utilize the unique attributes of each system. This left Nintendo as one of the very few to do so. And Nintendo famously doesn’t prioritize things like frame rate, which is why I was so surprised by the 60 FPS patches some Switch 1 games received. Once again, another half-step by Nintendo.

So what does this mean? Well, much like with the PS4, I think it’s going to be about two or three years until we really start seeing a nice stack of Switch 2 exclusive games making the console purchase feel justified. It sucks that the concept of generations has fallen to the wayside, but this is where we’re at now.

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As always, thanks for reading.