There’s an interesting new rumor that forms an impressive picture for the Switch 2’s third party game support.
Third party support has generally been a major Achilles heel for Nintendo. While they enjoyed healthy third party game representation in the original NES/Famicom, the terms under which third parties could make games for the platform made the company, and it’s then President Hiroshi Yamauchi, disliked. Even before the PlayStation came in to steal away those third parties, many of those companies already wanted to move away, with some acting on it by going to Sega, NEC, etc.
Moving forward to the Nintendo Switch’s launch in 2017, and you could see major game companies, such as Take Two Interactive, Blizzard, and even Japanese peers like Bandai Namco pass on supporting the console. Of course, many of those companies would go on to regret that choice, and reenter the platform, as Nintendo turned the hybrid platform to the biggest success they have ever seen in the industry.
The situation has now flipped, where those third parties do not want to miss out the launch of the Switch 2. We reported on a rumor to this effect that suddenly appeared at the start of the month. Just last week, another rumor emerged that most of the newer Assassin’s Creed games would be making their way to the Switch 2, including the latest title in the series, Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
And that takes us to today. As shared on the GamingLeaksandRumours subreddit by user Joseki100, a ResetERA user claimed that they worked on one such Switch 2 launch game, that’s also a major third party title.
ResetERA user TomPennySteeze posted this on the forum:
“Hmmmm, I never signed any pieces of paper or e-NDAs, all I heard was that the Switch 2 was releasing in 2025 back in early 2023, as I had an opportunity to port a game to it for my next project.
I had just come off of said games sequel so that should tell you what kind of library is being readied for this thing, although tbf it was a big franchise and a big name for casuals/non-gamers to get excited about.
I’m thinking Nintendo want to give a big buffer of time for 3rd parties/AAA ports to stack up for the release date.”
As Joseki100 concluded, the game that they believe fits this description would actually be Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
Originally released in 2019 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a very credible title to be coming to the Switch 2. Although the game received ports to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, Electronic Arts and Respawn may have simply worked on bringing the PlayStation 4 / Xbox One version of the game to the Switch 2. If the rumors about the Switch 2 are true they may have made this port with some optimizations for handheld and docked modes.
What would be subsequently interesting is if Respawn was also working on its sequel, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, to also come to the Switch 2. That game launched on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S last year, and is getting backported to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One next month. One may say that that move doesn’t bode well for the current generation of consoles. But, for the Switch 2, its an opportunity to get even more current generation games than the Switch did.
We will point out that just because this game being ported is credible doesn’t meant the rumor is. But if the Switch 2 is what we think it will be, and it also becomes successful, EA may very well decide to make these ports to fulfill this prophecy, if it wasn’t actually true the first time.
