Topic: Nintendo Switch 2

@FishyS
I do feel like the different layouts on the Switch 2 largely mitigate the eShop slop problem. It still exists obviously, and will continue to exist as long as people buy them, but those are not the standard views on Switch 2. The Switch 2 eShop puts way more emphasis on games your friends play, popular recent releases and recommendations

If the Switch eShop did the same the incentive for the slop would be far less. Because people wouldn't be seeing it as much so less people would buy them. But at least for now on Switch 2 it's not as prominent. Which is good

In the eShop, if you choose the option to browse only Switch 2 games, at the moment there's no shovelware at all. Of course the list of S2 games is still fairly small, and you're gonna miss out on some legitimate new indie games which don't have a Switch 2 version (yet) because of the devkit situation. But at least it's nice to simply browse a list of genuine games and see if there's anything that piques your interest. I went through the whole list yesterday and ended up wishlisting a couple of Switch 2 games I'd never heard of before.

@metaphysician, I've been saying this for AGES! AMEN!

If people really can't decide what they want before entering the eShop so they can just search it, then I think the best way to go is to add filters that will allow individuals accounts to block / unblock any publishers from appearing on the eShop whenever.

As I was complaining about, it is hidden gems that have become very hard to find and the Switch 2 eShop layout doesn't help with that. The good unknown indies are now lost in an infinite unsorted ocean of slop. The usual response to this is 'just do research'. As someone who goes through every eShop entry every week and tries to do some basic research, all I can say is that it has become massively harder in the last couple years to sort through the chaff.

I agree the eShop has become much better if all you want is relatively major games or games which Nintendo highlighted or are selling well.

That would help a lot although the last couple years have shown that publishers make shell companies to continue to sell their scam games under a different label when one publisher name becomes known to be bad. Some publishers also mix in a couple high quality games to get attention and then spam garbage after that. At the current rate, the eShop feels in danger of eventually becoming 90% AI generated garbage so leaving curation entirely to consumers may not be especially good for either consumers or the game industry.

@FishyS, personally, I think that starting to block more games only leads to more game blocking, which would also be bad for the games industry I think. There's already the situation where niche third party games like Hyperdimension Neptunia are getting blocked in the west. I really don't want any more games to be blocked. But again, I am willing to negotiate on people being able to filter their own account's eShop.

Gamestop lists Mario Wonder at $70, even with the upgrade being $20. Are we seeing Nintendo being consumer friendly or was this just a mistake?

@PikminMarioKirby i was gonna get on you since the page has been up in the us for a good few hours now, but... strangely enough, the upgrade pack has a price, but not the game + upgrade pack.

then again, based on my (very sketchy) calculations of the japanese prices (converted japanese upgrade pack price is about 63% of the actual us price, and applying the same logic to the full price comes out much closer to 80 than 70) it's much more likely it's still 80 and more stores are just being willing to price under msrp.

I knew it was top-shelf on Switch 2 from the demo, but having the full game now it still impresses me.

I think quality standards are very different than content standards. I've bought games from the eshop before which crashed after 2 minutes of play and simply couldn't continue.

I do think the eShop should follow their own stated rules by disallowing e.g. games actively trying to scam people or that don't function as advertised, but in terms of games which are low quality but not actively malicious? That's where I want curation — it doesn't have to be blocking the games, just abilities to have discoverability. The hard working indie artists shouldn't automatically lose to the corporate shell-company AI spam machines. Either let players rank publishers or have Nintendo itself have a method where publishers are rated better business bureau style. Or even yelp style. I understand your concerns about censorship, but there is a very large gap between serious censorship and chaotic anarchy and both extremes make life bad for everyone.

We aren't really all the way in that extreme; games have been blocked since day one of consoles because there have always been rules. My only desire is for the current process to be tweaked to be both more pro-consumer and also more pro-real-developer. The early days of Switch were better at this mainly because the scuzzier companies hadn't worked out all the loop holes and methods of abusing the eshop yet.

Sorry, I realize this discussion shouldn't really be in this thread. Though I am sad Switch 2 didn't do more to improve on these issues. Although since most Switch 2 owners mainly just want AAA and AA games and famous indies, Switch 2 did basically fix the eShop for that majority.

It would be fine if it was not on Switch 2. Video game consoles used to have 3rd party exclusives and gaming didn't die when that happened. Gamecube wasn't even that successful and got a decent amount of 3rd party support, and it is infinitely easier to get more 3rd party games than ever, including a certain amount of AAA releases, so "necessary" GKG games are not even a blip on my radar. The two video games that sincerely need game key cards currently make no difference to how me or most people feel about Switch 2. With the exception of the Xbox 360, I have barely played any game on any non-Nintendo home console for more than a few hours in my lifetime and it is fine. Many people have barely played Nintendo games because they don't play Nintendo and that is also fine.

Also specific wording. It is not something I am actively upset about, but I'd also certainly not be upset if they were not on Switch 2. I don't begrudge people for wanting it on Switch 2 or buying them, because that would be stupid to do, but I can't be too enthused that people get to play it because of the wider implications surrounding its release.

For more context, I have the hot take that it is fine for 3rd party games to be exclusive to a console and I think its weird that that's considered bad. Not every game needs to be on every system. To this day its weird that that one Tomb Raider game was a temporary exclusive to Xbox One and that was some terrible disaster worth being upset about, especially considering its an Uncharted like game and PlayStation fans had...Uncharted. Or the weirdos that'd prefer Bayonetta 2 not exist instead of being Nintendo exclusive.

@FishyS
That's true, but it's also a bit of an unsolvable problem. How do you curate and highlight the list in order to make it harder for the slop factory to overwhelm your customers. Whole also not hiding more niche, but still great, titles largely unknown to the community

Any solution that promotes a selection of "interesting" titles over stuff people aren't into almost by definition will hide the hidden gems. And if it doesn't then all that does is shift which gems are hidden

There is a solution, its just not an easy one: customers have to be willing to do their due diligence, and not rely on a storefront as a tool for finding products of interest. Which really should be trivial, because why should you depend on "the people wanting to sell you stuff" to know what things you might want to buy? Customers and publishers both need to treat the store as a store, and not an easy shortcut for their own research/marketing.

Stores are quite literally designed to not have to do your own research and marketing. The beans are all next to each other; none of them are secretly catfood disguised as beans. They are required to label ingredients accurately. With great probability the fruit will not be full of worms. etc. In fact a store is closed down or put in legal jeopardy if it does not have basic quality standards and a certain level of honest advertisng. And although having all the products be chaotically disorganized is not illegal, it would not be a very successful store if it chose to do that.

So yeah, I would prefer the eShop be more like a real store.

@metaphysician
The problem isn't the availability of slop on the eShop. The problem is that the flood of slop makes it harder to find actually decent releases and releases you might like

If you walk into a record store, for example, you don't just see boxes of records on the floor straight from the truck. At least not in a decent store. Instead you'll often see a section of best sellers, curated staff picks, probably a stand for prominent new releases. And of course you can go into the main section and flip through records grouped by genre and sorted alphabetically

But the eShop, especially on the OG Switch, presents just a list of all the new releases. Chronologically. That you have to manually go through in order to figure out what's new. The abundance of slop makes it harder to find something new and interesting. Same deal with the constant repackaging of games into new bundles

As I said, the addition of a recommendations section, highlighted section and the way they now highlight popular recent releases rather than just going into recent releases? That all helps. And I don't see why you would be against such an improvement

Out of curiosity, has anyone here ever discovered something useful in the recommendations section? I click in occasionally but it is essentially always only stuff already on my wishlist. Plus Nintendo published games like Drag X Drive which I don't want. But I realize I am not really the target audience of that recommendation section.

No, but last week I was recommended 'Brainrot Tung Tung Sahur' 💀

I'm well informed of games released, and check every week for new releases and add any to wishlist as needed, making purchases as needed.

The Best Sellers is also my go-to. I miss nothing. Honestly never had a problem. I'm not against improvements, I just personally don't feel any kind of way about it because I stay informed.

Check every Thur, scroll the recent releases and add to wishlist as desired. Start today, and do it again next week, and once every week after. Over time it ensures you keep tabs on anything of note.

@FishyS
I've been reminded of stuff on it that I was interested in but had forgotten about. Which I occasionally then add to my wishlist. I don't think I've purchased anything from it yet but I do check my wishlist occasionally for stuff on sale or to purge stuff I'm not longer interested in

Honestly most of my purchases are either games I was highly anticipating or stuff that I was aware of which goes on a deep enough sale they become hard to ignore

Does anyone here have any 3rd party dock recommendations? I generally try to stay away from 3rd party accessories like this, but with how expensive buying a 2nd dock is, I figured it was worth a try at least.