San Francisco Frontiers - Indie game studios battle for piece of Switch 2 success

The three games on display are all made by smaller-scale, independent developers seeking to impress users of the device that became the world's fastest-selling console after its launch last month.

But with Nintendo game sales long dominated by in-house franchises -- from "Super Mario" to "Donkey Kong" to "Animal Crossing" -- it can be hard for outsiders to break through.

"The Switch 2 has certainly gotten off to a strong start," said Krysta Yang of the Nintendo-focused Kit & Krysta Podcast.

But so far, "for third-party game creators, the success of Switch 2 didn't necessarily translate into strong sales".

Many Switch 2 owners bought the gadget to play Nintendo exclusives, such as "Mario Kart World", and the high price of the console and its games mean consumers have been less keen to splash out on a range of titles, Yang told AFP.

Also, many non-Nintendo games currently sold on the Switch 2, such as "Cyberpunk 2077", were already available on rival platforms such as Sony's PlayStation 5.

"Nintendo is incentivised to keep their third-party developer relationships strong as they understand to sustain a console lifecycle," but "there certainly are challenges" ahead for the developers, Yang warned.

That did not put off scores of hopefuls from travelling to Kyoto, Nintendo's home city, to tout their games -- many still works-in-progress -- at three-day indie game expo BitSummit, which kicked off Friday.

At booths showing off new software from retro-style puzzles to immersive horror epics, several gamemakers said they were in talks with Nintendo about launching their work on the new console.

- AI challenge -

The Switch 2 is more powerful than its hugely popular predecessor, and that "opens up the space for what can be made", said Ryan Juckett of the US studio Hypersect.

Nintendo's own games "can be quite expensive, so there's a gap for cheaper, easier-access games that people can play on the fly", said Kent Burgess from New Zealand, part of the team behind the game "Bashful Adoration".

Other concepts were more eclectic -- from sword-fighting with barbecued sausages to a game where the main character is a shy giraffe whose head explodes if he talks to a stranger.

In the United States, "some people, when they try the game, are like, 'oh we don't quite get it because we are so extrovert'," said Lin Huang, the artist behind "A Week in the Life of Asocial Giraffe".

Gaming industry consultant Serkan Toto said Nintendo once had "an almost legendary reputation of being hard to negotiate with" for outside gamemakers.

"But that changed with the Switch 1", which launched in 2017 after the company's previous console the Wii U was "a total flop" -- opening the way for more third-party games, including indie titles, Toto said.

And the landscape could change further as new technologies gain pace.

No indie gamemakers AFP spoke to at BitSummit said they used artificial intelligence heavily at work, although some said generative AI helped speed up coding tasks.

Few were worried about the potential for job losses in the industry, for now.

"There is not going to be a world in which an AI game will be better than a hand-built game, because there is going to be that love and soul that developers put into it," said Lauren Kenner, senior brand manager for Noodle Cat Games.

Q.Taylor--SFF