Nintendo's next Switch 2 exclusive is an eight-player FromSoftware brawl, not a Mario game

Nintendo has put its next Switch 2 exclusive in the hands of FromSoftware, the studio behind Elden Ring, and the game is The Duskbloods: a hardcore multiplayer title about vampires ^[1]. The Verge, which played a few hours of it at FromSoftware's Tokyo offices, calls it a world away from the approachable games Nintendo is known for, and argues it could end up as one of the most important exclusives on the console ^[2][3][4].

The break with precedent is the story. The Verge's framing of the old model is blunt: people buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games, and the bestseller lists on Switch and 3DS are full of Mario Kart, Pokemon and Animal Crossing ^[5]. Outside developers can broaden a platform's appeal, but that is something Nintendo has historically struggled with, per the same piece ^[6]. So a marquee exclusive now rests on a studio Nintendo does not own, in a genre it does not run, aimed at players its bestseller list does not describe.

Mechanically it is not a Mario. Eight players take control of vampiric characters called the Bloodsworn, drop into a level stocked with enemies and gigantic bosses, and are thinned out across phases until a few remain and fight to a single survivor ^[7], which is seven eliminations per match ^[17]. It is not a Fortnite-style battle royale, according to The Verge; the design mixes competitive play with the roleplaying fantasy of Dark Souls and Bloodborne ^[8]. Progress runs on "virtue", points awarded for collecting items, killing weak enemies, felling bosses, finding hidden corpses and, in later rounds, killing players at specific spots on the map or pledging at an altar before someone stops you ^[9]. Matches run four phases, and "the culling" removes anyone short of the virtue threshold when a round ends; that threshold depends on how much virtue everyone else banked ^[10]. Outside the final round, death costs only time, since you respawn with your virtue intact ^[11]. The intent, as The Verge describes it, is that a weak one-on-one fighter can still reach the last phase because there are so many other ways to score ^[12].

The operational risk sits in the same paragraph. The Verge's writer found the game overwhelming at first and needed time to absorb the scoring, because in most competitive games killing other players is the clearest path to victory and here it is not, particularly early ^[13]; the efficient opening is exploring, clearing weaker enemies and picking up items and experience ^[14]. A platform whose commercial base is family-friendly software is now selling a game with a comprehension curve, and the value of that game depends on concurrency rather than a launch-week number. Eight-player lobbies need a population, and a population needs retention.

What to watch is the network test running later in August, which uses the same build The Verge played and offers six characters ^[15]. Three things will show up there: whether the floating virtue threshold holds when players optimise against it, whether the roster reads as legible or as noise to a Switch audience (it includes an aging senator with a rapier cane who summons a prehistoric bird and turns into a dinosaur, a ninja with circular blades, a man who shoots fire from a stone in his hand, and an armor-clad character named Zork carrying an electrified chunk of undersea cable) ^[16], and whether Nintendo markets this the way it markets its own games.