Nintendo Switch released earlier this year and for now, there aren’t many games available to play on it. The only major title we had was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Many wondered why Nintendo didn’t have much to offer in terms of smaller creative indie games to cover for the lack of major IPs.
Sony and Microsoft have made a name for themselves by working with indie developers to bring us games like Limbo, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Unravel, Ori and the Blind Forest and much more. However, Nintendo has always had a stressful relationship with smaller developers and things aren’t going to get better anytime soon if an ex- developer’s statement holds any weight.
Former Nintendo developer Giles Goddard says that Nintendo is now only interested in bigger projects and isn’t making efforts to do experimental stuff. The policy remains the same for both first and third party studios. Bigger projects only but what the company fails to understand is that you can not release frequent major IPs without risking a baron phase every now and then.
I think internally they are only really interested in doing the big projects now. Whether that was since Iwata-san passed away or not, I don’t know. But they are less inclined in doing experimental things now, I think.
The company has a program called “Nindies”for indie devs but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere for the time being. Nintendo Switch lineup is going through a baron phase right now and a steady stream of games is required.
Source: SourceGaming
