State of the Game Industry shares developers' thoughts on Switch, VR, console upgrades

[William Gayde]

Every year the Game Developers Conference polls game creators to put out its State of the Game Industry. This year they polled over 4,500 developers on their thoughts about various platforms as well as trends they anticipate. The main topics in question centered around the Nintendo Switch, mid-cycle console upgrades, and virtual reality.

The full report is now available and highlights some key areas that the industry is heading towards. The Nintendo Switch has been receiving lots of buzz around the gaming community, but it seems developers aren't too interested. Of the 4,500 polled, only 3% were actively working on games for the Switch. As a follow up, only 5% expected their upcoming games to be released for the Switch. It's not all bad news however for Nintendo's new baby though. Half of the developers saw the Switch outselling the Wii U and just under half said the Switch would resonate with gamers, but not in a spectacular way. 

Moving to the Xbox and Playstation side of the field, the Project Scorpio and PS4 Pro mid-cycle refreshes did not seem to go over well. Only 18% of game designers saw these upgrades as positive with many becoming weary of an unsustainable precedent being set. 

The virtual reality scene is still hard to gauge but about 39% of developers said they were currently working on VR titles. Development for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift was very close between brands. For those currently working on VR games, 24% said they were developing for the Vive as opposed to 23% for the Rift.

The most common platform for developers to work on remains the PC/Mac at 53% followed by mobile devices at 38%. The 2017 GDC State of the Industry was released ahead of the conference taking place this year starting February 27th to March 3rd.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/67775-state-game-industry-shares-developers-thoughts-switch-vr.html

 

[yRaz]

Well Nintendo has almost always developed games in house for their platform so I don't know why anyone is really surpised here... Considering that the majority of games sold on other consoles is quite literally Call of Duty, I don't see this as a problem at all. Keeping other sh*t developers out of the switch ecosystem is nothing but a good thing. I have a PC for any game I want to play that isn't on Nintendo Switch. My PC is better than any xbone or ps4 anyway.

 

[Panda218]

Well Nintendo has almost always developed games in house for their platform so I don't know why anyone is really surpised here... Considering that the majority of games sold on other consoles is quite literally Call of Duty, I don't see this as a problem at all. Keeping other sh*t developers out of the switch ecosystem is nothing but a good thing. I have a PC for any game I want to play that isn't on Nintendo Switch. My PC is better than any xbone or ps4 anyway.

THIS EXACTLY THIS!

 

[Slappy McPhee]

Well Nintendo has almost always developed games in house for their platform so I don't know why anyone is really surpised here... Considering that the majority of games sold on other consoles is quite literally Call of Duty, I don't see this as a problem at all. Keeping other sh*t developers out of the switch ecosystem is nothing but a good thing. I have a PC for any game I want to play that isn't on Nintendo Switch. My PC is better than any xbone or ps4 anyway.

Well said!

 

[Kotters]

As a man that's already preordered his switch, I find nintendo fanboyism tiring.

 

[psycros]

As a man that's already preordered his switch, I find nintendo fanboyism tiring.

I haven't seen much of that for years now. Wearing a Zelda t-shirt is just nerd fashion, not a declaration of hard-core fandom. Kids these days grow up with phone games, not Nintendo, and their older fans have moved to more serious platforms. The fact that Nintendo is finally embracing mobile proves that their own platforms aren't delivering sufficient revenue. The only reason the Switch is even getting a degree of hype is because its a dual-mode portable console (thought NOT as portable as Nintendo led us to believe). Frankly, I think the $300 price point is going to hurt it - you can get either competing console for that. I expect a price reduction pretty quickly after launch.

 

[Kotters]

I haven't seen much of that for years now. Wearing a Zelda t-shirt is just nerd fashion, not a declaration of hard-core fandom. Kids these days grow up with phone games, not Nintendo, and their older fans have moved to more serious platforms. The fact that Nintendo is finally embracing mobile proves that their own platforms aren't delivering sufficient revenue. The only reason the Switch is even getting a degree of hype is because its a dual-mode portable console (thought NOT as portable as Nintendo led us to believe). Frankly, I think the $300 price point is going to hurt it - you can get either competing console for that. I expect a price reduction pretty quickly after launch.

I'm referring to this thread in particular, not the trend of wearing Zelda shirts.