Probability of official Nintendo Switch port?

[ddabrahim]

Hi guys!

I was just wondering what is the probability of an official Nintendo Switch port?

I heard there are unofficial homebrew ports which indicate it is possible but the trouble is as far as I know, once you ever sign the NDA and become an official Nintendo Developer at any point in your life, Nintendo can actually sue you for touching homebrew staff. It is actually included in their NDA once you sign it, you are not allowed to get involved with the homebrew community in any capacity.

So do you guys think there would ever be an official Nintendo Switch port available?

[slime]

There are multiple unofficial Switch ports that use Nintendo's actual SDK rather than a homebrew route. Once you've signed Nintendo's NDAs you can probably contact the authors of those ports. They can't be publicly available to people who haven't signed those NDAs because they're using the official NDA'd SDK.

[ddabrahim]

Thanks.

But how do I know it is safe and does not include any spyware staff at minimum sending some statistics to a random server?
I guess if I can request the port through the dev portal or some sort of official channel guess it's fine but would prefer if the port is coming from you.

But glad to know ports do exists which makes me wondering, is there any games in the eShop powered by Love2D?

[slime]

Being restricted to people who have Nintendo's NDA access doesn't mean the source code is automatically unreadable, that'd be a choice for the author to make.

Or you could contact people who've shipped games using that port.

But glad to know ports do exists which makes me wondering, is there any games in the eShop powered by Love2D?

Yes there are several, for example the Kingdom Rush series.

[MrFariator]

Keep in mind that even if you have a game that you'd like to port to Switch (or other consoles), the people who have existing ports do not necessarily offer those ports for free. Some of them are running a business of porting love2d games to Switch (offering to port and publish games for a revenue split), or might like to have some compensation for offering their porting work to you (the deal you arrive to may vary). You might be able to get some tips or pointers on how to do the love2d port yourself, but for this you'd need to have signed the necessary NDAs with Nintendo.

However, as usual, the important thing to have first and foremost is a game to port. No use worrying about ports until that's covered.

[ddabrahim]

Of course I was not expecting a free port I would not even trust any free port really. I get that source would be provided but if I did understand the port, I could just make the port myself. So I would consider ports only if coming from registered businesses, developers through official channels, getting a bill for the port would actually be the best option I would consider.

The project I am working on is not ready to be published yet, but for the first time I got very interested in targeting the Switch more so than an iPad or Android tablet. Before I put too much thoughts in to this I was just wondering if it's even possible or it is a straight no.

[jasohill]

Hi everyone. I'm a new Love2d developer who is slowly learning how to use this great framework. I just wanted to add to this conversation that the newest hot Steam and Switch game Balatro was also developed in Love2D and was ported to Switch as well. Just a data point to add to this conversation.

[pauljessup]

All of my games except one have been ported to the Switch- if you can get a love2d publisher, I highly suggest it. I earned more there (by a metric ton) than on itch or steam