Nintendo is doing more to reach out to third party developers with the Switch, and one of the best ways to do that is to make it easier to develop games for the system.
Which is why Nintendo includes support for third party game engines such as the Unreal Engine and Unity. In fact, they have gone a bit further this time around by mastering the use of those engines themselves.
That’s according to Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, who recently told investors (via VentureBeat):
“Though game software developers in the U.S. and E.U. are often said to have superior skills to their Japanese counterparts when it comes to software development techniques, Nintendoʼs software developers have mastered state-of-the-art technologies such as Unreal engine, and their skills can now be compared with those of Western developers.”
However, Miyamoto did not specifically say that Nintendo was going to use the Unreal Engine to make games on the Switch. Instead, he said that “creating our own development tools was a high priority for us.”
Which makes sense — if Nintendo wants to make sure that the Unreal Engine runs great on the Switch, they need to know how it works and “master it” themselves.
Over the years, fans have re-created their favorite Nintendo games in the Unreal Engine, and they looked incredible. For example, here’s Zelda in Unreal Engine 4 and here’s Mario in Unreal Engine 4 as well.