Games industry analyst Michael Pachter has said in a recent article published by SIFTD that the Nintendo NX must secure third-party support if it hopes to compete in the current market.
In the article, Pachter says that if the NX has unique features in the same vein as the Wii U gamepad, the console will turn off third-party studios before the console is even out the door.
If Nintendo gets the same level of support for NX that it got for the Wii U, it’s doomed before it launches. That’s much, much more important than the price. If they get third-party support, if they make it in such a way that everyone can port every game over and the incremental cost to make if for Xbox One, PS4 and NX is $1-2 million, every game will be there.
If it’s a whole different language, or requires a whole different programming scheme, or requires something to do with the GamePad where you’ve got the controller different the way Wii U works, it’s doomed. No one’s going to support it.
The more this thing looks like a PS4 or Xbox One I think the better it does, and, ultimately, the only people who are going to buy it are people that don’t have a PS4 or Xbox One. Or, people who have a PS4 or Xbox One, and want to play Nintendo games.
Pachter’s comments certainly hold water – the Nintendo Wii U has struggled to gain third-party support ever since its release three years ago, and generally now only sees first-party titles released for it.
Nintendo themselves have remained rather tight-lipped on what features the Nintendo NX will have or how powerful it will be in relation to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but the company says it will start revealing more about the console in 2016.