Image & Form on Nintendo’s digital strategy with the Nintendo Switch

Yesterday, MCV UK published an interview with Julius Guldbog from Image & Form, who shared some pretty interesting about Nintendo’s strategy for the Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch, and how different it is from the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS.

Previously, having a game go through lotcheck at Nintendo could be somewhat of a nightmare, as everything needed to be good enough at every single step. This could take months (literally), since you needed to go through lotcheck for every region, and failing even once would mean a lengthy delay (generally, several weeks).

With the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo didn’t really lower the standards, it’s just that developers and publishers now only have one version to submit for the entire world (something Image & Form previously talked about during their AMA session on Reddit). This save them a ton of work, and there’s no real need for a publisher for one specific region anymore. Julius Guldbog even compared Nintendo’s approach to Steam or the AppStore.

But that’s not all: even the publishing tools (to set up sales, the Nintendo eShop page, etc.) are much more streamlined and modern.

Julius Guldbog also explains that Nintendo’s become much more active when it comes to approaching indies and get them to release game on their platform:

Nowadays, they see a good game at a convention and they just walk straight up to them and ask them to develop for Switch. From what I know, they’ve never done that before, so I think they are getting with the times.

This all sounds pretty good for indie developers/publishers, but also for players, as that means more games for them to play!

Source: MCV UK