There’s an Audience for Bethesda Games on Nintendo Switch
During the last console generation, Bethesda didn’t have any develop and release any Wii games and the company didn’t release any games for the Wii U. But things have changed since the Nintendo Switch came out in 2017.
According to Bethesda executive Pete Hines, the company has realized that there’s an “audience who plays other kinds of things on [the Switch] that also likes our stuff.”
“One of the things we discovered in talking with Nintendo, is that there’s a segment of their audience who plays other kinds of things on their platform that also likes our stuff,” Hines said to GamesIndustry.biz during E3 2019. “And there’s a segment of their audience — and it’s a healthy size — whose entry point into the platform is our title. [Nintendo] can see what is the first thing people play on a new Switch account, and when it’s a Doom or a Skyrim, they’re like: ‘Somebody got a Switch and decided to play your game before anything else.'”
Hines mentioned how much more powerful the Switch is compared to other Nintendo consoles, saying that these recent Switch releases also have to do with “what that console could do versus any other Nintendo platform relative to the other platforms we were making games for.”
This year, Bethesda is launching Wolfenstein: Youngblood and DOOM Eternal on the Switch and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus launched on the console last June. Also, in 2017, the DOOM reboot and Skyrim released for the Switch. According to Hines, these releases are expanding the Switch’s audience as well as Bethesda’s.
“It’s interesting to see. It definitely fits an audience that [Nintendo] already has, but it’s also clear that we are bringing some new people to [Switch],” Hines said. “I met a guy yesterday who said that the first things they bought on Switch were Doom, Wolfenstein and Skyrim because they are the sort of thing they wanted, and the fact they were on the Switch made them get a Switch.”
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