We are happy to announce the immediate availability of Nintendo Switch support for the Defold game engine. Nintendo Switch is the first console supported by Defold. Approved Nintendo Switch developers can request access to Defold through the Nintendo Developer Portal. Access will be granted to Defold community members with Nintendo Switch included in their membership tier. Source code access is available as a separate membership tier.
Does the Patreon/Sponsor subscription need to remain active to maintain access to the Switch support? Or is it possible to subscribe for one month, get registered, and then cancel?
(Before you call me cheap: I develop 100% as a hobby without any profit whatsoever. It goes without saying that 25$ a month is negligible for professional development)
Is the developer approved by Nintendo for access to Nintendo SDKs and tools?
Does the developer have access to Nintendo Switch support for Defold as a community donor?
When it comes to 1) it is up to the Defold Foundation to only make the tools available to approved Nintendo developers. We will not give you tools access without Nintendo first approving you. And if access is revoked by Nintendo we must stop providing access. We will make an online license check when you build and fail builds if you are not a licensed developer. You can obviously use a cached build, hack the check etc but that is on you and you would be violating your agreement with Nintendo.
When it comes to 2) we will piggy back on the license check process and prevent you from receiving updates and performing builds if you no longer pay for access. We would also revoke access to the private forum category and download site for Nintendo Switch enabled versions of Defold. I guess you could hack your way around some of this but in general it will be hard for you to build for Nintendo Switch.
Please also keep in mind that $25/month is dirt cheap. Game Maker is $799 a year (Defold is $300). Not sure what it costs for Godot, but I’m guessing you pay more than $300 to get help porting your game. Unity and probably also Unreal are free but that is to be expected from game engine providers with almost unlimited funds.
As far as I know, you have to pitch your game to Nintendo, am I wrong? Maybe it is right to say you can register, but you can’t release it until pass the publishing progress?
What is bothering me, if there are any games that can show Defold possibilities on Switch? Do you have already something to show off? It would be awesome to show how it is looks like instead of just announcing the support. A small research shows that Interrogation is “coming for Nintendo Switch 2020” so @dapetcu21?
Also, from technical point of view - how it looks like when it comes to building an app? Is there a custom build server? Is it only possible when you have access to the paid membership? Or is it possible to setup a local build toolchain?
For building the app, you’ll use the same workflow, just with a different Editor/bob.jar. It’s the same build server, but it’ll check that the license is still valid (i.e. still an approved Nintendo Switch developer). There is a separate contribution tier that gives you access to the source, which would technically allow you to setup a local toolchain.
Not yet. We are collaborating with three different developers/studios to bring their games to Nintendo Switch. I will let the developers announce their games when they are ready.
I already mentioned this in Slack but I am super proud of you guys. €25 a month is crazy cheap, by the way. I’m not sure how much the nintendo developer kit costs, but €25 is basically nothing compared to the other costs involved.
Congratulations! 
