Nintendo also began gaining support of independent video game developers in the middle of 2016 to provide assistance to help them bring games to the Switch , led by Nintendo 's head of partner management Damon Baker . They had tried to draw in indie developers near the end of the Wii U 's lifetime , providing indie game demos that were highlighted during E3 2015 , but by this point , the Wii U had already been considered a failure . Nintendo sees games such as '' Snipperclips '' as a model of their target for indie games , in which they worked to help provide Switch implementation support and software tools to these parties early in the console 's lifecycle , according to Takahashi and Koizumi . Some , like Yacht Club Games , who have ported '' Shovel Knight '' to the Switch , noted that some of the major innovations in the Switch , such as the Joy-Con , were not revealed to them until just prior to the January 2017 announcement . Nintendo of America reached out to many independent developers and publishers , including Chucklefish , Team17 , and Devolver Digital , to gain titles for the platform and make the process of publishing easier . Nintendo still curates which titles they allow on the system , using the company 's past portfolio for evaluation , and still carefully time releases to keep a steady stream of new content . However , once a game is greenlit , pushing out patches and updates can be done rapidly and at no further cost to the developer . Nintendo also offers the Switch 's dev kit at 50,000 yen , or about $ 450 , far under the cost of a comparable dev kit for other consoles , making it more amenable for smaller developers to afford and build for the unit . Nintendo offers several of these indie games as " Nindies " through the eShop . Nintendo had anticipated that they would have at least sixty indie games released for the Switch through 2017 , but ended up with over 320 titles by the end of 2017 as a result of the console 's popularity . Indie developers have found that Nintendo has also had a significant role in the promotion and marketing of their games , including using the games to help promote the Switch itself , in contrast to Microsoft or Sony . These developers also found Nintendo tries to keep a better rapport with fans of Nintendo 's products , and help these fans identify Switch indie games they feel they will like the most , including those games that build on Nintendo 's classic games from the NES , SNES , and Game Boy eras that can draw in a more global audience . Baker says that while they do try to encourage indie developers to release their games as a Switch console exclusive , they do not force developers towards this , knowing that the developers must have a good business case for doing so
E3 2015
E3 2015
Nintendo Switch