With the Switch 2, Nintendo needs to fix the eShop more than anything else

The Nintendo Switch 2 is almost here, marking the next generation of Nintendo consoles. It's going to run games better, feature new accessories, and has an exclusive FromSoftware game coming next year. It's also going to have new goodies like GameCube games on Nintendo Switch Online, but one of the biggest potential updates could be coming from the Switch operating system itself. While it seems like the OS is going to be similar to the original Switch, hopefully, it means an improved eShop experience. The eShop on Nintendo Switch runs poorly, is filled with garbage games, and is terrible at surfacing anything outside the most popular games on the platform.

The Switch 2 eShop hopefully runs better

Forget Zelda in 60 FPS, I want the eShop not to be choppy

If you have never used the Nintendo Switch eShop before, you might be confused about how a store menu can run poorly. It runs poorly, with laggy controls to navigate the different menus. Switching between any of the main store pages takes a few moments before your input is actually registered. It doesn't help that moving up and down between the categories on the side loads up new game titles on the right side of the screen, which seem to load in every time you swap, making the system slow down and stutter. Those titles don't load quickly, and attempting to watch a trailer for any of the games in the store feels like it might brick your console.

While I don't expect the Switch 2 eShop to run perfectly and be an enjoyable experience, not running poorly feels like the absolute bare minimum for the new console.

Too much slop to sort through on the Switch eShop

Too many cheap, bad games are crowding the store

The Nintendo eShop, along with other gaming storefronts like PlayStation, Steam, and Xbox, have become overrun with games that are either actual shovelware or just look like shovelware at first glance. At the time of writing, the recently released section on the Nintendo Switch eShop includes $5 games like The Cozy Garden of Forgotten Dreams, which appears to be a visual novel made with a Pixar AI image generator. That game could be a real and earnest release, but considering the publisher, Aldora Games, has 117 more games on the eShop, all priced at $4.90, and they all appear to be AI-generated visual novels, it seems unlikely.

A quick scroll past shows that the recently released section is filled with way more shovelware than actual video games, which makes it hard to identify what could be just a small indie title getting buried. Nintendo has changed how it shows the top-selling charts (via VGC), which shifted from the number of copies sold, which benefited shovelware selling for $1 versus full-priced games, to a revenue-based chart. For the Switch 2, Nintendo either needs stricter requirements for getting into the store, or it needs to be better at burying that garbage in the eShop.

Better curation for actual indie games and smaller releases

The eShop only shows Nintendo games and trash

An issue similar to the overabundance of shovelware being released on the eShop is how bad the curation is on the platform. For example, of the top four games in the featured section, only one was released in 2025, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, and two of them are some of the biggest video games on the planet: Minecraft and Fortnite. The featured section is filled with heavy-hitter AAA games and Nintendo first-party games.

Don't get me wrong, I expect most of the featured sections to be populated by these games, because they sell well. But the part that frustrates me is scrolling through the whole featured section and seeing two newly released games, and only one of which I wasn't familiar with. Something that other storefronts, like Steam, are better at is recommending games based on what I have played. Steam, in particular, is great at surfacing games I'm unfamiliar with but interested in. Not all of those games are great, but having it successfully recommend games I'm not familiar with seems like a big upgrade, especially if the eShop isn't going to get strict about what games are released.

Nintendo appears to be making some of these changes

How it plays out when the console releases remains to be seen

Between the updates to the most popular charts and this Nintendo blog post, it seems like some positive changes are being made. One feature in the blog post is the recommended games section, which will show games you have either played with someone else using their copy or are similar to other games you have played. It plays trailers and has a wishlist button ready to go. The video shows mostly Nintendo games being recommended, but that could just be because it's a demo video, and the games may have been hand-selected instead of populated based on the games you've played. This feature sounds like exactly what I'm asking for, and it looks like it runs smoothly in the trailer, even with videos running. While it still looks like it uses the same layout, and Nintendo hasn't said anything about the shovelware, it seems like Nintendo at least knows that the eShop could use some improvements.

But will it actually run better on my console at home?

Nintendo doesn't always make the obvious choice, which makes me concerned about the Switch 2 eShop

With the way Nintendo operates, it makes unpopular decisions for business reasons, like the upsetting existence of game key cards andfake game carts that just download games from the eShop digitally, despite being physical carts. It would not shock me if those videos weren't accurate to how the eShop performs, and the recommended games might just feature the most popular games you don't own already. For as many improvements that Nintendo has detailed ahead of launch, I have too many questions and too little trust in Nintendo to do anything successfully outside of making incredible video games. Luckily, the Switch 2 launch is just around the corner, which should have answers to all of my burning eShop questions.