Key Takeaways
- Nintendo’s eShop is slow, unintuitive, and practically unusable.
- Even if it were faster, the eShop’s design makes it hard to discover new games.
- The eShop is just a website. It shouldn’t be this bad.
Fantasies usually lead to disappointment. The idea that people willingly sit down to write articles like “What I Want in the Nintendo Switch 2” makes my skin crawl—you know your wishes won’t come true, so why plant the seed of disappointment into other people’s heads? Yet I now find myself participating in this futile charade. The Switch eShop has turned me into a clown.
Idle Loading Screens Are the Devil’s Playthings
Video game consoles have the worst app stores on the planet. Whether it’s an Xbox, a PlayStation, or some iteration of Nintendo console, I can guarantee that the built-in app store is a slow and unintuitive hunk of junk. I try to avoid these digital storefronts, but an occasional visit is necessary when a new game isn’t available on disc or cartridge.
After a friend recommended such a game to me, I decided to make a quick visit to the eShop on my Nintendo Switch. And I was quickly reminded that the eShop isn’t just “bad;” it’s practically unusable. By the time the eShop home page had finished loading, I’d forgotten why I opened it in the first place. Every cursor movement was accompanied by lag, and if I nudged my joystick the wrong way, I was launched into some other slow-loading segment of the eShop’s sidebar.
And, in what may only be described as malevolent generosity, the eShop likes to freeze or crash. It knows that it’s tormenting me, so it sends me back to the home screen. Very nice.
The 3DS and Wii U eShops also suffered from these problems, and I distinctly remember thinking, “wow, they still haven’t figured it out” when I first used the Switch eShop in 2018 or 2019. Nintendo’s app store has been a mess for almost 14 years, and I suspect that it will still be a mess whenever the Switch 2 hits store shelves.
So, I’m begging Nintendo to put the smallest amount of effort into the Switch 2’s eShop. This should be an incredibly easy task—the eShop isn’t even an app, it’s just a website that’s loaded from the Switch’s internal web browser (it even sends user information to Google Analytics).
If the web browser is so bad that it can’t load a simple web page, replace it with a better browser! Chromium is open source! You’re a billion-dollar company!
To Nintendo’s credit, you aren’t forced to use the eShop from your Switch. The eShop website lets you browse and purchase digital games from your computer, and third-party solutions like Deku Deals make it easier to discover new digital games.
A Redesign Would Be Nice, Too
Nintendo should focus on improving the eShop’s speed. But even if the eShop becomes lightning fast, it will still be kind of difficult to navigate. A redesign that prioritizes browsing and discoverability would go a long way (and reduce the need for third-party tools like Deku Deals).
The Switch eShop has just five tabs that highlight new, featured, and discounted games. You can narrow things down by genre from the search menu, but there aren’t enough genres to choose from. There’s not even an “indie” category, which is odd, as I vaguely remember there being one on the 3Ds.
While this limited selection of product categories should provide some level of discoverability, they simply fail to do so. The same few games seem to appear at the top of each category, and there’s an apparent lack of curation here—I mean, seriously, why is a game titled ‘Hentai Girls’ prominently featured on multiple pages of the eShop? Is there a speedrunning community that I don’t know about?
I know that some people long for the days of the Wii Shop Channel—that’s not what I’m talking about. The Switch eShop is lacking in personality, but I’d rather have a good app store than a fun app store. It should be an easy fix. The eShop is just a website; it can be redesigned without starting from scratch.
Do I think that the Switch 2’s app store will fulfill my requests? No, not at all. I’m not optimistic or hopeful. In fact, I’m mad at myself for taking the time to humor this idea. You’ve heard of neuroplasticity? Well, there’s a new wrinkle in my brain that’s dedicated to the eShop, and it will force me to feel disappointment when Nintendo inevitably fails to give the Switch 2 a good app store.
