Nintendo's creative director, Shigeru Miyamoto, was happy to reveal that the company's development team has made considerable progress as the new Nintendo Switch console now supports the Unreal and Unity engines.
According to the creative director, "Regarding our software development environment, third-party developers who are making software for PC can now easily adapt that software to work on our platform."
Miyamoto goes on to say that the current development environment allows them to port a PC game to Nintendo Switch in less than a year. Internal developers from Nintendo have felt the ease of software development. He boasts that Nintendoʼs software developers have already "mastered" the state-of-the-art technologies like the Unreal engine, despite the idea that American and European game developers have "superior skills". The Nintendo developers are now eager to continue making new software.
Shinya Takahashi, the managing executive officer, even said that despite having to refrain from disclosing technological details, "we have been very flexible when making technological selections." The working rapport between the company and gaming GPU maker, Nvidia, was noted by Takahashi. The two gaming and tech giants are currently working on hardware for Switch. The console is being developed to perform well while consuming low power at the same time. According to Takahashi, the partnership was vital and fully displayed individual craftsmanship.
Hiroshi Yamauchi, the third president of Nintendo once said that third parties were "not helping the industry at all." It should be noted that Nintendo planned to support Unreal Engine 4 on the new console. The previous Wii U supports it as well. Nintendo Switch is also set to work with the Unity engine. However, it does seem to show that Nintendo is welcoming its doors to third party developers.
For now, it seems the company is on the right track with its excitement in creating new software. It has to be in order to address current user problems with the Nintendo Switch especially regarding the lack of playable games.
