Nintendo Titles Will Not Support Cross-Platform Play

With so much talk about cross-platform play recently, you may be wondering what Nintendo's stance is.

Nintendo has commented on their future plans to introduce cross-platform play to their titles.

While as it may come as no surprise, considering most Nintendo titles are made exclusively for their console, there are a few exceptions.

Nintendo Won't Support Cross-Platform Play

Earlier this year, Pokemon Unite was announced to be released on the Nintendo Switch and mobile devices.

Pokemon Unite is an online team battle game. It debuts as a free-to-start title and will support cross-platform play.

During Nintendo's second-quarter earnings call this month, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa responded.

“After advance discussions with The Pokémon Company about Pokémon Unite, it was decided that given the genre of the game and the anticipated player population, a cross-platform format was appropriate.” 

“That said, we have no plans for cross-platform play for Nintendo titles.”

Meanwhile, Furuwakasaid that Nintendo have a healthy line-up of third-party games in the works.

“Other software publishers plan to release a wide variety of titles for Nintendo Switch going forward.”

“There are many genres of games that we cannot make on our own and providing these kinds of titles enriches the Nintendo Switch gaming experience, so we are very grateful for that.”

It's fair to say that with other companies being involved in the game creation process, there may well be more games on the horizon that support Cross-Play.

Nintendo has also reported that lifetime Switch sales sit at 68.3 million units (since September 30, 2020).

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has also sold 26.04 million units since its release in March.

It's clear that Nintendo isn't missing out on the cross-play opportunities with great sales like that. But it does raise questions as to what the potential could be if they expanded to more cross-platform titles.