Marce-chan
Magical Girls <3
- Pronouns
- They/Them
What were the droughts in 2018, 2022 and 2024 exactly? Sure, 2020 had one because of COVID delaying the holiday games meant for it(3D World, Metroid Dread), a game aiming for that year possibly being rebooted(Metroid Prime 4) and more. And Nintendo still did notably better in 2020-21 than MS and Sony that had new hardware releasing then.My problem is the main point of the Switch as the consolidation of Nintendo's handheld and console lines was specifically to prevent software droughts. It's a big failure in that regard, with years like 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024 having notable droughts, even near year-long droughts (2020 after ACNH, 2024 largely).
There's always an ebb-and-flow with release cycles. But the number of first party games released on the Switch is on-par with previous home consoles such as the Wii. Not a doubley-buffed lineup like the number of Wii and DS games released during that generation's timespan.
2018 had a lot of Wii U ports that aimed for a varied audience released throughout the year, and its last 3 months were packed AF with Mario Party, the first mainline Pokemon on a home console ever and Smash.
2022 then... Had a banger in January already with a new experimental Pokémon game, then the very first 3D Kirby game ever, then Switch Sports that sold 10m, then Mario Strikers and Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes, then a super stacked H2 with Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Splatoon 3, Bayonetta 3 and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.
You could make a point for 2021 and 2019 that actually had less games releasing on H1 and that skipped months, but I highly see anyone considering those year "droughts" since each had one game that made everyone "forgive" the dry quarters.
But H1 2021 leaned almost only on Super Mario 3D World+ Bowser's Fury and Monster Hunter Rise (3rd party) and sure 3 games in half 1 2019 felt like "a drought", seeing the wait between NSMBU DX(a Wii U port) and Yoshi's Crafted World(I'd argue Peach Showtime is a bigger release) and between that in March and Maker 2 in the very last day of June.
This year only had April without a game. May has two games.
Yeah imagine comparing the vanilla Wii U ports + Mario Tennis of H1 2018 to the much more ambitious remakes + Peach of 2024.Jeez comparing 2018 now to this year.