Nigel Lowrie, the co-founder of indie publisher Devolver Digital (Hotline Miami, Cult of the Lamb), says that indie games do much better on Switch than on other consoles because Nintendo has cultivated a player base that is more “open to interesting concepts” and smaller games.
In a GDC interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Lowrie was asked about the current state of the video game industry and what’s happening right now. We’ve seen a lot of layoffs, studio closures, and video games that fail to sell well as players seem unwilling to stop playing live-service hits—like Fortnite or GTA Online—making it harder for new or smaller games to succeed.
Lowrie said that today all games are competing more than ever for players’ time as big live-service hits suck up more and more hours. He also expressed skepticism about launching smaller games on subscription plans like Game Pass, as players might become less willing to buy such games in the future. Interestingly, according to Lowrie, the gamers most willing to purchase smaller, less traditional indie games are Nintendo Switch owners.
“[Nintendo has] created an ecosystem–and therefore a user base–that is really open to interesting concepts and gameplay ideas,” said Lowrie to GI.biz. “The PlayStation and Xbox users, for as long as I’ve been doing this…there’s a lot of people that still like indie games, don’t get me wrong. Cult of the Lamb has done very well on those platforms. But I think the large majority of those people buy those platforms to show off what they can really do.”
Lowrie explained that these players on Xbox and PlayStation are often more interested in bigger games like Destiny, Starfield, and Helldivers 2. And while those platform holders do advertise indie games, they also know their audience is more interested in the next big AAA game and prioritize those bigger titles more often in their respective digital stores.
“I think the platforms themselves all are really strong believers in indie games,” said Lowrie. “They really do push them. I think on the other end, the consumers–as big as they might be–there’s still a smaller portion than we would like on Xbox and PlayStation that are open to looking at a pixel art platformer and going, ‘I’ll give this a shot.’”
GamesIndustry.biz reports that at GDC 2024, some smaller devs had talked about skipping PlayStation and Xbox entirely due to how poorly some indie games have done on those platforms. It will be interesting to see if Nintendo can continue to cultivate this indie-friendly ecosystem when the Switch 2—which will likely be more powerful and more capable of running bigger, newer AAA games—finally launches.
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