Warning I am in no way presenting any evidence to support any of the claims I will make. This is just an opinion/conversation starter.
Everyone knows that every developer hit a slump of sorts when transitioning into HD development. Games cost more money and took much longer to make compared to SD consoles or handhelds. This growing pain was felt by every developer at some point in time. Nintendo was hit particularly hard when they transitioned to Wii U, which was a much bigger problem for them since they typically don't get the same third party support like Xbox and Playstation do when their first party studios are lagging behind with development.
It took Nintendo until the Switch generation to really nail down their developer pipeline in regards to HD software releasing. They have been the most consistent developer in being able to always have big games launching every quarter of the year (sometimes multiple per quarter) without severe delays, even during the covid pandemic where studios are still feeling the impact today. Switch never had a content drought from Nintendo despite their "feeling" like a drought due to when Nintendo decided when and when not to hype things up via a direct.
As HD generations went on, Sony, Xbox, and third party developers saw an increase in development costs and dev timelines as machines got more power. Which gets us to today, the PS5 and XSX generations. Development timelines seem to be skyrocketing where some games are taking five years to develop if they are not completely iterative on their previous games. We all see how hard microsoft is struggling right now to even release first party games for their systems. For example, Forza Motosport 7 released as an Xbox One X launch title in 2017, and we are going on six years since and we still do not have the followup from the same studio. It was already quietly delayed form the beginning of 2023 to latter 2023. This is a super long development cycle for a series that was on a two year release schedule for the entire xbox one generation until Forza 7 released.
This leaves us with Nintendo and the "Switch 2" development cycle question. Nintendo systems live or die by the quality and frequency of Nintendo first party releases. With the next system being the significantly real power jump since Wii U launching eleven years ago (Switch is not a 'generational jump' and I doubt thats controversial to say), will we see Nintendo hit with the same teething issues every developer gets with big generational leaps in power? Can Nintendo or the next system afford to have longer development cycles and first party content droughts out the gate when we all know third party developers most likely won't be on board from the get go until they decide to "test" the waters some years into the cycle?
Which scenario for the next system do you think would work best for the health of the system:
1. A majority of the games being "cross gen" with Switch level graphics but running at much higher framerates and resolutions, but games release with the similar cadence as they did on Switch where we always had first party games to keep us satiated.
2. A mix between cross gen / switch graphical fidelity with higher framerates and resolution and some games really pushing the hardware but they have much longer development times and we maybe only get one of those big games a year.
3. Nintendo pushes the new systems tech to the fullest with much higher graphical fidelity, but games take much longer to develop and Nintendo relies on hesitant third parties to fill in the gaps because Nintendo first party takes too long to release big games.
Everyone knows that every developer hit a slump of sorts when transitioning into HD development. Games cost more money and took much longer to make compared to SD consoles or handhelds. This growing pain was felt by every developer at some point in time. Nintendo was hit particularly hard when they transitioned to Wii U, which was a much bigger problem for them since they typically don't get the same third party support like Xbox and Playstation do when their first party studios are lagging behind with development.
It took Nintendo until the Switch generation to really nail down their developer pipeline in regards to HD software releasing. They have been the most consistent developer in being able to always have big games launching every quarter of the year (sometimes multiple per quarter) without severe delays, even during the covid pandemic where studios are still feeling the impact today. Switch never had a content drought from Nintendo despite their "feeling" like a drought due to when Nintendo decided when and when not to hype things up via a direct.
As HD generations went on, Sony, Xbox, and third party developers saw an increase in development costs and dev timelines as machines got more power. Which gets us to today, the PS5 and XSX generations. Development timelines seem to be skyrocketing where some games are taking five years to develop if they are not completely iterative on their previous games. We all see how hard microsoft is struggling right now to even release first party games for their systems. For example, Forza Motosport 7 released as an Xbox One X launch title in 2017, and we are going on six years since and we still do not have the followup from the same studio. It was already quietly delayed form the beginning of 2023 to latter 2023. This is a super long development cycle for a series that was on a two year release schedule for the entire xbox one generation until Forza 7 released.
This leaves us with Nintendo and the "Switch 2" development cycle question. Nintendo systems live or die by the quality and frequency of Nintendo first party releases. With the next system being the significantly real power jump since Wii U launching eleven years ago (Switch is not a 'generational jump' and I doubt thats controversial to say), will we see Nintendo hit with the same teething issues every developer gets with big generational leaps in power? Can Nintendo or the next system afford to have longer development cycles and first party content droughts out the gate when we all know third party developers most likely won't be on board from the get go until they decide to "test" the waters some years into the cycle?
Which scenario for the next system do you think would work best for the health of the system:
1. A majority of the games being "cross gen" with Switch level graphics but running at much higher framerates and resolutions, but games release with the similar cadence as they did on Switch where we always had first party games to keep us satiated.
2. A mix between cross gen / switch graphical fidelity with higher framerates and resolution and some games really pushing the hardware but they have much longer development times and we maybe only get one of those big games a year.
3. Nintendo pushes the new systems tech to the fullest with much higher graphical fidelity, but games take much longer to develop and Nintendo relies on hesitant third parties to fill in the gaps because Nintendo first party takes too long to release big games.