Nintendo always had a walled garden for games that appear on their platforms. Right from the days of the NES, only games with the seal of approval was allowed on the NES. That did not change much even until the days of the Wii U as Nintendo notoriously curates the content that is allowed onto the system.

But as the Wii U brought Nintendo’s greatest decline in years, it would make sense for Nintendo to relook the whole situation. That is where Nintendo’s Head of Partner Management for the Publisher & Developer Relations, Damon Baker, comes in.

In an interview with Game Informer, Baker sat down to explain Nintendo’s changed perspective and relationship with developers. Instead of waiting for third-party developers to come to Nintendo, under Baker’s leadership, Nintendo actively sought third-party developers out to develop on Nintendo platforms.

“For the last two years, I’ve been asked to head up this initiative, at least here in North America, to reach out to different publishers, from triple-A publishers all the way to independent developers, and evangelize what [Switch] is all about,” Baker says.

Still, Nintendo had to make things easier for the developers to get their games on the Nintendo platform. Starting with the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo had to create frameworks that make it easier for developers to port their games over.

“Developers could certainly go to any of our competitors and have a much larger install base to work with,” Baker says. “The reason why they’re really interested in working with us is because of some of the features and functionality [of Switch], but it’s also because we’ve created a framework that is much easier for these developers to bring their content over.”

Aiding developers, Nintendo also help Indie developers with their promotional work as well, providing some of the indie developers spotlights in the Nintendo directs and so on. However, as Baker noted, the best promotion is through the word of mouth from Nintendo fans.

Baker understands that Nintendo’s hardcore fan base outshines any promotional help his team can give or unique traits the Switch may possess. “As much marketing or PR support that any of us can possibly give to any particular game or any particular franchise, the strongest message out there is the word-of-mouth messaging,” he says. “That’s more powerful than anything we could do.”

At the end of the day, it shows that the new Nintendo is more proactive when communicating with developers, especially indie developers.

“It’s our job to go out there and find the things that [the players] are interested in and the types of genres that they can sink their teeth into,” Baker says. “Already there’s an amazing catalog of content available. When I look at what’s coming out over the next couple of years and the stuff that we’ve even just most recently announced, people are going to be spending a lot of money on eShop because there’s so much great stuff to choose from,” Baker says with a laugh. “We really do believe that there’s something for everyone.”

Already there are plenty of indie titles on the Nintendo Switch eShop, all thanks to the efforts of both the amazing developers and Nintendo. If you want to find out more about Nintendo-Developer relations, you can read the full article at Game Informer here.