Nintendo Switch Dev Kit Price Drops, Welcoming Affordable Indie Game Development
Nintendo gave some great news to indie developers wanting to make games for the Nintendo Switch. During the Game Creators Conference, 2017 that was held in Osaka, Japan, Nintendo announced that the Nintendo Switch dev kit price will only cost 50,000 yen, which rounds out to roughly $450 USD. This makes things much easier for indie devs who typically make games on a strict budget.
To give a bit of comparison to show how drastic of a price drop this is, rumor has it that Wii U development kits ran for about $2,500. On the other hand, when Sony’s PlayStation 3 development kit launched, it was priced at a massive $20,000, with the PlayStation 4 dev kit coming out at a much more reasonable (but still terribly expensive) $2,500. Hopefully, this affordable dev kit trend will continue so that third party developers can keep making great indie games at affordable prices.
With a beautiful number of indie games already coming to the Nintendo Switch, such as Shovel Knight, Yooka-Laylee, and Stardew Valley, we can only expect that easier access to development consoles can only come as a benefit to Nintendo.
The Nintendo Switch will be available March 3, 2017, or it’s already out if you’re one of those people who managed to pick up a stolen one.