Nintendo Switch eShop Gets Major Upgrade Ahead of Switch 2

The Nintendo Switch eShop has received a huge upgrade ahead of the Nintendo Switch 2, which should make using the digital storefront better for not just Switch 2 users, but those who stay behind with their Switch, Switch Lite, and Switch OLED consoles. Since the release of the Nintendo Switch back in 2017, the Nintendo Switch eShop has hardly been updated or improved, much to the annoyance of Nintendo fans. It is not just that the Nintendo eShop is bare bones and in need of improvement, it lags far behind its competitors, the PlayStation Store and the Xbox Store, in terms of functionality and features.

More specifically, Nintendo has made a tweak to how the Nintendo Switch eShop charts work, which may sound irrelevant, but it is going to improve the functionality of the Nintendo eShop by removing the number of shovelware and slop games from being featured in said charts, and thus promoted by the Nintendo eShop.

Unfortunately, the Nintendo Switch eShop is going to continue to be littered with shovelware games and scam games and everything else of this variety. Nintendo is not cracking down on these games being published to the Nintendo eShop. Normally, nobody would buy these games, but the developers of them have been gaming the system.

What these developers do is make said games extremely cheap, which is enough to get a variety of bites from consumers, some just curious and willing to fork over a couple dollars, and others not knowing what they are buying. As a result, these games will then appear on the best-selling Nintendo eShop charts, which in turns gives them promotion and allows them to sell even more copies. Nintendo seems to be finally cracking down on this though.

With a recent software update, Nintendo has changed how it calculates and determines these charts. Rather than use copies sold over the last 48 hours, it is going to use revenue across the last 72 hours. This will eliminate all the games that have been abusing the previous model, however, it is going to favor games that cost more. Now, a game that costs $20 will have to sell more than 4x the amount copies as a game that costs $80 in order to top it on the charts.

Whether this will permanently solve the problem of shovelware abusing the metrics to promote their games on the Nintendo eShop, remains to be seen. But in the meantime, it is as much-need improvement that should restore order to the Nintendo eShop charts.

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