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Even as Switch 2 makes itself home to even more huge third-party games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring thanks to its extra power, former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé believes the company will "never position themselves as a direct competitor to PlayStation."
Speaking in an interview with The Game Business, Fils-Aimé discusses whether or not he thinks the Switch 2 is a more viable platform for big AAA third-party games. After all, it's not like this is the first time these games have been available on a Nintendo console, but how many people really played Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 on Wii U, for example?
This time around with the Switch 2, Fils-Aimé says, "I absolutely believe it could be" a viable platform. Even so, that doesn't mean that he thinks Nintendo is trying to take on rival company PlayStation directly.
"Let's be clear, Nintendo, in my opinion, will never position themselves as a direct competitor to PlayStation. It's not in their DNA," he states. "It's not how they think about the business opportunity. However, would they welcome some of the latest core gamer-type of content, whether it's the latest Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty, onto their platform? Absolutely. Do I think that there's a player base there for those games? Absolutely."
Fils-Aimé says that "the key," which is something that the team at Nintendo "thinks about every day, is making sure that third-party developers have the tool sets so that they have the full capability to bring the best of their games onto Switch 2." He adds: "Nintendo, as it thinks about its hardware – it doesn't think through, 'How I'm going to get the absolute latest graphics chip, the latest processing chip,' that's not how they think about it. But the chip set of Switch 2 can do quite a lot. And so, it's in the middleware, it's in the education to the third-party."
We've already been seeing this shift to "middleware" happen. Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford previously said that "the Nintendo Switch 2 has been a joy to work with" for the upcoming Borderlands 4 port. While it's worth noting that this version has been delayed in order to allow for extra polish, Pitchford was previously very complimentary of the system, noting: "As a game developer, it's awesome."
Back to Fils-Aimé, and the former NOA president goes on to discuss "one of the things that always amazed me," that being that "Nintendo developers are so efficient with their games. Big games like Tears of the Kingdom, when you look at the size of the game, the actual file size is about half of what another developer would do."
This, he says, is "just in the efficiency that Nintendo is able to get out of its systems, and that efficiency is what they need to share with third-party developers so that their best content… maybe not the latest version, but, you know, half a step behind, could make its way onto Switch 2 and be quite successful."
