[pjmlp]

Thank US 1983 crash for that.

Gatekeeping is a way to avoid a minium level of quality, instead of a dumpster copy cat trash that inudates all the stores where there is no control.

Want to learn how to do consoles?

Get a toy handeld using ESP32 or Arduino.

[anthk]

PC gaming had tons of shovelware since the beginning and even got both good propietary and libre software games with great quality.

So did the Game Boy, which the NIntendo seal of quality was almost given for free because lots of games were junk even under the GBC era.

[pjmlp]

Exactly because anyone can do it.

[anthk]

Then explain some "games" for the Game Boy Color where the quality was very subpar.

[pjmlp]

You said it yourself, Nintendo platform bouncers let too many spoil the party.

Here is the thing, we aren't entitled to anything in life.

Don't like the way consoles work? Don't buy them.

[dvdkon]

> Here is the thing, we aren't entitled to anything in life.

Are you sure about that? I'm entitled to a lot of things if my country's laws are anything to go by, for some reasonable definition of entitlement. I could be entitled to running my own software on a Switch if lawmakers say so. The EU already forced Apple, so what's another platform?

[pjmlp]

Start a petition to see how far you will go, good luck.

[starkparker]

There's quite notoriously no minimum level of _quality_ required to publish on the Switch store.

Here are three identical low-quality Switch games from three different publishers:

https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/word-chef-switch/

https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/chef-word-ardee-s...

https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/eat-your-letters-...

And here's the Unity asset that these games use almost verbatim:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/packs/word-s...

If Nintendo wanted to gatekeep on quality, publishers wouldn't be able to publish Unity assets directly to the shop, much less multiple publishers shipping the same asset.

If OP's kid buys a Unity asset and publishes it directly to the eShop, she'll have done the same amount of work as these publishers and produced the same quality of app. She can't because of Nintendo's developer program, not because Nintendo would disqualify it as poor quality.

[lesostep]

> If OP's kid buys a Unity asset and publishes it directly to the eShop

I think the root case of the "kids can't write games for their peers" isn't Nintendo or anyone else. Both Apple and Switch are praised by the parents for their restricted platforms. You can give a kid both of them and be sure that that kid wouldn't install age-inappropriate apps or games. Self-made stuff needs to be moderated heavily or kids will share pornographic games (i mean they are kids. Who haven't tried to play at least one "age-inappropriate" game by the age of sixteen?).

In my humble opinion, Nintendo just don't want to do too much moderation, so they added hoops after hoops to jump through, until the amount of low-effort apps decreased enough for moderators to do their job thoroughly for every app.

> I think in her peer group the second most popular device after the iPhone is the Switch.

I would say that the inability of sharing anything self-made is why apple and switch are popular choice to buy for your kid. No need to talk about safety measures, if you lock them in a system.

So, IMHO, the conflict isn't between kid devs and nintendo, its between kid devs and their peers parents.

[pjmlp]

Just because some garbage ends up on the store, doesn't mean all the garbage gets through like on the PC and Android.

Even club bouncers occasionally let the wrong folks get in.

OP's kid has plenty of other options to play with game development.