It's been well documented that searching for your next favourite game on the Nintendo Switch eShop is more hassle than it should be and as a result, we've seen plenty of developers slash the prices of their releases in a bid to land their title on the store's 'Deals' and 'Best Sellers' tabs. Sometimes, they've even given games away for free.
In some ways, it's great that you can load up your Switch and grab so many games for such a little amount, but we'd argue that things are getting a little out of control. We've just had a quick browse of the eShop ourselves in the hopes of finding some quirky, fun games for cheap, and discovered that a whopping 64 titles are currently being offered for less than a single dollar in the US. It's a similar story in Europe, too - visiting the UK's eShop reveals 49 games available for less than £1.
A small handful of these appear to be titles that are permanently priced that low; Soccer Pinball, for example, has always been priced at $0.99 which is fair enough. The majority of the list, however, are games which are on sale with prices reduced by as much as 90%. That isn't an extreme, either - plenty of the games listed are 90% off.
If you've landed here hoping to find a bargain and want to see the cheap list of games for yourself, you can do so by heading to the 'Search' tab of the eShop (top-left), clicking 'Price Range', clicking 'View More' on the '$0.01 - $9.99' (or equivalent) section, and then changing the filter at the top-right to 'Price (low to high)'. Even that was unnecessarily complicated, wasn't it?
It leaves us with an interesting topic for debate: should we be celebrating the fact that, as gamers, we have access to plenty of games for relatively low prices, or does this just further highlight the discoverability issues faced by both developers and players as a result of the eShop's design and the sheer volume of games releasing each and every week? We'll let you mull that one over in the comments.
Comments 91
It's the Nintendo equivalent of Sports Direct or the DFS sale. Apparently there is one mythical Switch somewhere in the midlands where you can purchase these games for full price.
They will know which price to ask when they can. These are mostly like B movies
Games that cost a dollar usually aren't worth a dollar.
If the games are good, price doesn't matter. If its shovelware, then maybe the games making it on the system (Santa Tracker/ Bingo) need to be filtered a bit.
I scrolled through every game on sale last night... took 45 minutes.
Well, if developers want the audience to "discover" their game for the very first time through the eShop, I can see how it'd be a hassle how the shop is structured. But the same is true for ANY virtual store.
Personally, I find very few games that way. I usually know what I'm looking for before I go to the eShop.
Sometimes depending on what you're peddling, a lot of sales with a little income is more profitable than infrequent sales with moderate or high income.
I believe there was an article that highlighted that "A Robot Named Fight" enjoyed a great increase in profits after offering a really high discount. It also got me to check out the game Membrane which was pretty good for how cheap it was. But it certainly wasn't one worth the full cost.
If they are decent to good games then it wouldn't hurt to throw a dollar in there and give it a try. The problem is we don't know which one is good and which one is bad until we actually play it. Here's hoping Nintendo add some kind of review section to its store or at the very least let us rate it if we like it or not. Helpful feature makes for a great shopping experience and the eShop definitely needs to evolve with those in mind.
I personally think it is not the fault of the developers. The platform's responsibility is to increase visibility. It just so happens the developers are smart and found a way to increase their own visibility.
Developers purposely overprice their games in hope of fooling people when they see 90% off. Truth is most are barely worth that.
After that free train parade by Cubix before the holidays put all of their games atop the best sellers list this is only going to continue.
Personally I think the eShop should be shut down until the Switch gets folders b/c I'm sick of all these cheap or free games I pick up w/ my otherwise useless gold coins taking up space all over the place.
Maybe we can get a eShop boycott going on twitter - #nofoldersnobuy has a nice reggae ring to it. Maybe we can boycott Feb 29th, "Leap off the eShop for Leap Year".
I know this article is about cheap games nobody wants but everybody wants folders so I'm trying to focus on the positive.
Been saying it for a while, the eshop has sort of become the iphone app store. Yes there's some quality titles as there is on the app store but there is also tons of cheap shovelware games. Whenever I look through sales on the Switch I always seem to come across tons of cheap little games I have never heard of with very little effort put into them.
I look through every single thing on sale every week, and most of the cheap stuff is definitely shovelware but occasionally there are some gems. Car Quest comes to mind which is just so weird but actually fun and frequently on sale for $1.
From what i've seen of these cheap games, they are what you pay, cheap and nasty
#nomoreshowelwaresuntilfolders
@rjejr I wouldn’t call gold coins useless. You just need to be patient with them. I’ve been saving them since last year for Animal Crossing and so far it’s going to cost me £20ish unless I go on a spending spree before March.
No Thing was a pretty good game for $1
It’s like the apple App Store or google store except a lot of less free games
I have absolutely nothing against games for less than a quid!
Can't argue with the people saying you get what you pay for. Wonder if theres some diamonds in the rough tho? Is there a list of these under $1.00 games anywhere?
I got battlefield one for£4.49 on origin pc. Amazing 🤯 absolute bargain
Must be nice having so much free time you can waste it playing this kind of stuff.
They need more tabs. Move actual top line games somewhere else like on the Paystation Store for everyone else who does not.
@Glassneedles "You just need to be patient with them. I’ve been saving them since last year"
Problem is, you can't be patient with them as they expire after 12 months. So if you've been saving them "since last year" means 2 weeks ago, you're fine, but if you mean holiday 2018 then they've probably already expired on you.
https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/16559/~/do-my-nintendo-points-expire%3F
I read the title of this article "N64 Games are currently available for less than $1" I got really irrationally excited for a moment.
Shovelware lots of shovelware
My youngest son purchased the $1 Skeeball game over the holidays. I can say that he's already got his money worth out of that game.
Developers' concerns certainly have more weight than ours, although I suspect Nintendo is long aware of them as well and likewise just begs to differ at the time (and many folks use other options like the already released games' news channels to advertise a new title with "launch 10% off for owners of X!" - similar tactics, but it's 10%, not 90%). But I've said more than once that I have zero sympathy for customers blindly purchasing heavily discounted "shovelware" purely based on the hype factor. A game can sell eleventy zillion at $60 price, define a couple genres and still prove to be not up to your tastes. And $1 shots are the responsibility of a buyer's sound mind and judgement, too. If your only reason to make a blind impulse purchase is "eh, why not, it's one buck", then mourning said buck afterwards can only come across as hypocritical. In terms of odds and expectations to enjoy the title, you have essentially just pulled a very deliberate gacha.
And if NL ever runs a comment award, I'll be tempted to nominate "sick of all these cheap or free games I pick up w/ my otherwise useless gold coins taking up space all over the place".😂 Sarcastic or not, it sounds like something BEYOND any semantic capacity the term "first world problem" can hope to offer.
If you have a copy of PetitCom4 (currently Japan only), I have 34 games on there, so far. They're my usual style of bit-games. Short sharp bursts of fun that you can play around with for a little while.
I WAS aiming to do eShop games, at the start of the Switch's life, but the more shovelware I saw, the less appealing I thought a collection of my "rubbish little games" might be.
Full list here, if you have PetitCom4. https://agameaweek.com/?Blog=9140
I honestly think this is a bad thing for the platform. It reminds me very much of the early days of the App Store on iOS, lots of fairly priced games full of variety and ingenuity.
Then the platform got really popular and suddenly there were hundreds of games launching a week and developers would drop games to 79p to get their game to the top of the charts so people could find it and then they'd put the price back up.
Pretty quickly everything went to 79p all of the time and then eventually everything was "free" but full of adverts. Finally all the games started to look the same: 2D puzzle games with creepy smiling characters that just want to con kids to pay for another hit of gems or gold.
I don't think Nintendo can fix the discoverability problem as there's no way to ensure all games get a fair amount of time in front of customer's eyeballs. The best they could do is ban all free to play stuff and mandate games should be at least £15 to try and force good quality games only.
Developers are using that as a tactic to get visibility in the hopes of getting on the most popular list. QubicGames successfully gamed the entire system since mid December with their "keep coming back for free games" tactic.
That said, I have enjoyed some games that were priced that low. However, my expectations are low and I generally research before purchasing. One Strike, Utopia 9, and REKT have all gotten decent play (and only one was a freebie for me).
The practice is a just a symptom of the horrible eShop interface where discoverability is almost impossible.
Low prices are fine. It’s a choice of the dev or publisher. See: steam.
Some games doesnt even belong there. There is lots of garbage in the eshop. Starting to look like playstore.
It's the same with Steam. The difference is, the curation features on Steam are light years ahead of the eshop.
Plenty of rubbish out there... It's easier to browse sales via website on your pc, but on switch itself? NIGHTMARE. No sorting option you just have to go through all that crap/
" The-Chosen-one4m ago
Some games doesnt even belong there. There is lots of garbage in the eshop. Starting to look like playstore. "
^this
If a game is selling for less than £1/$1, usually it isn't even worth that, with very few exceptions.
That said, with Nintendo still failing to give the Switch such basic features as a shopping cart, reviews, 'stars', "recommended for you specifically" and (I dont recall seeing this one) "more like this" sections, i can see why some devs might go so low as to make their big discount sticker stand out. I rarely buy something on the eShop on a whim, i usually know what I'm logging in to buy and their primitive system is exactly why, so such sales might be the only chance a dev has of showing me their game should I stumble upon it on a whim.
Saying that, I also looked through the list and they all look trash anyway.
@Elithal It should be the publisher actually that is in charge of increasing a games visability. Sure, the platform holder should be giving the tools to help increase a games viability but those tools should be there for every game. They shouldnt be in charge of making your game stand out though, the publisher should since they're the ones with the financial incentive for it to do so. If somebody cant be bothered to properly market and highlight the game that's their own problem.
But as I said, the tools should be provided and Nintendo is worse than lackluster there.
Once a week, I look at the "Coming soon"-section (or whatever it's called in english) and put all interesting games on my wishlist.
What's so hard about that?
Quantity over quality. That's these sales in a nutshell. It's this very reason I always speak poorly of most Indy games and advocate for Virtual Console.
Imagine you enter a store and find "old news papers for 5c, perfect replacement for real toilet paper!"
That's what most these games actually are for gaming.
@BulkSlash
Well said. But we all know what will be happening if Nintendo would try to ban games (with legal content): Headlines like 'Nintendo is censoring the eShop', 'No chances for small developers on the eShop',...
N64 games confirmed!
I see it this way.... Back in the day when we use to go outside and play with sticks because the internet was extremely rare and only the well off families could afford it... and the computers plugged into the phone lines... and it would take a day to download a song that hopefully worked and was not a loud screeching noise for 3 minutes instead... Well to pass the time we had these places where you could rent vhs movies and video games in person physically... it was usually around 5$ for 3 days and 2 nights of rentals. Well.... I just look at the eshop deals as renting a game for cheeper then it costed back in the day but getting to keep the game. With that mindset I have no room to complain at all. We do absolutely need folders and a better eshop layout though... but as far as price... eh... I can donate a few dollars here and there to give a game a try. Heck one play of mortal Kombat, street fighter or nba jam at an arcade was more expensive then some of these games that we get to keep. So yeah.... I see no point in complaining about free/cheep games... even if they are trash ya still get your money’s worth if you play it just once or twice.... but like I said... I would love a folder I could file the trash into.
There's definitely big opportunities for improvements with the shop interface. I guess after the relative quiet of the Wii U and 3DS eshops we're all a little bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff hitting the Switch's eshop. I've tried some of these $1 games and like @Mjoen says it used to be $1 per play for some arcade titles so if you play them twice for more than 5 minutes its better value than those were! Though I can relate to @agramonte about having the time to play them. I got 3 kids and a busy job. Games, like movies, TV & books are one of those things I'm forever backlogged on.
Come on NintendoLife, please do a review of some (if any) that are worth picking up! There have been some games I've not wanted to pay full price for, but happily picked up when heavily discounted. A game with a low score when priced at £20-30 might have a much better rating when a couple of quid.
@rjejr good suggestions haha
On the note of getting these games, don’t waster yer precious gold! Keep saving it and before you know it you can at least get a $10 game?? I just deleted some games that I felt were muddying up my library a bit with their lower quality, and I’ve got a much happier collection now!
@Mjoen fair enough. I just wish they didn’t cloud up the best sellers lists! It really leaves a bad taste in my mouth after cursing the cosmos for such unbalanced lunacy.
I'm worried that developers are making too little money.
I would rather buy one good AAA title for $60 than 64 $1 titles.
The quick points:
1. Nintendo should clean up the eShop. Some more curating would be nice as well.
2. Developers are more than welcome to heavily discount their games.
3. Shovelware exists because someone buys it, whatever the reason may be.
The presence of these $1 games neither jeopardizes the eShop or adds quality to it. They're just there. Although I think some hidden gems don't get the attention they deserve (Rocket Fist, Treadnauts, Flat Heroes), I do believe most games worth your money will get your attention one way or another without crazy sales.
Most of the time I'm just left surprised by the lack of curation on the eshop
@rjejr I’m aware of the expiration. I had been saving points since late 2018 and then the delay was announced. I knew the points were expiring so got World of Final Fantasy when it was on sale for £17 for free and got a discount t off something else.
The delay was announced in June so I should be fine by 3 months. Of course if it gets delayed again I’m in the exact same boat...
On the contrary, I think a lot of these games are coming out with bogus-ly high prices for the quality of the game. So, many of them I'm not feeling bad about them having to heavily discount their mediocre game. I actually think a lot of devs have caught on to the fact that when you heavily discount your game, you are more highlighted in the eShop. I'd be willing to bet a lot of them purposefully release their game at a higher price then discount to the actual value to attract more "bargain bin" shoppers. The other examples are the ones that literally release "discounted" and stay that way. Which I think is a joke and shouldn't be allowed. You shouldn't be able to remain discounted without actually being listed at full price. I get it for pre-order incentive, but after that, no.
@Toshiro_Baloney Honestly so did I lol I was in so may emotions to process lol
Be nice if it worked like Netflix/Hulu. A game you surely never want to buy, give it a thumbs down or X it out and it never shows it to you again when looking at the store logged in.
This is a ridiculous amount of games to sift through. Does anyone have any recommendations? I purchased Moto Rush GT for $1.49 a week or two ago and it’s not bad. Easily worth the price. Gotta figure there’s 1 or 2 on here that might be ok.
Used to have a policy of automatically downloading anything under a quid but couldn't keep up.
Struggling to find coverage of a lot of these games - there must be the odd gem like soccer slammers.
Teslagrad for 3$. That's my recommendation
These games are perfect for those looking to spend their change they got from registering physical games. A lot of times you have a couple bucks left over.
Don't understand why Nintendo won't fix the issue. There have been enough complaints. And they are perfectly valid.
Sort by average play time would be really useful for the eShop. It's great when games are cheap, but, I'd rather not download something I'm not going to play or spend only a couple minutes on.
@neogyo "I just deleted some games"
I just upgraded from a 64GB to a 128GB SD card a few weeks ago so I wouldn't have to delete anything. It hurts my brain deleting stuff I already traded in my useless gold coins for. Or in the case of Cubix made sure I downloaded a new game every day for. Space Frontier is pretty good.
But seriously, 3DS and Wii U had folders, Switch has been out for 3 years, what's the problem Nintendo?
@Glassneedles "Of course if it gets delayed again I’m in the exact same boat..."
Announced game delays have always been a pet peeve of mine - what they do behind closed doors is on them - but now I see if becoming a factor in gold coin expiration. Well hopefully AC doesn't get delayed again, must be almost gold after all they showed of it in that Direct yesterday. Oh wait...
Which reminds me, has Nintendo EVER announced a game going gold? I can't think of a single announcement in my over 11 years on this site. Pushsquare has a few a year. Guess thats just another example of how secretive Nintnedo really is.
Good luck getting your game on time, I'll cross my fingers for ya while I bemoan my lack of Pikmin 4 news.
If I see an interesting looking game that I’m not familiar with I usually use the search function on metacritic to see if anyone has reviewed it.
Interesting how this only seems to be a concern with the eShop. With Steam, PSN, XBL, people buy a game they didn't like for dirt cheap: "Oh well, I only paid X amount for it". Difference audiences and different standards I suppose. Neither stance is particularly wrong.
As for me, every storefront has a massive amount of shovelware, I just check user impressions and reviews and know which games to get. Sometimes getting a game for like 60 cents is worth it; might not be a great game but it's hey, it's only 60 cents. Yes, the eShop definitely needs some work too.
Again of Nintendo can just revamp the Switch eshop to make it closely similar to the Wii U’s eshop format that alone would be a huge improvement! I just don’t understand why they leave it the way it is...🤔🤔 it’s so basic an annoying as it is now.
I thought the article meant “N64 games are now available on the Eshop for $1!” And I got really hyped.
My personal problem with it is the amount of trash that gets released as many are not even worth wasting your time for free! Lol
I thought everyone on nintendolife liked Indies. Now we're describing most of these games as shovelware. Well I'm happy people have seen the light.
The vast majority of these 99 cent games do not deserve the Nintendo seal of quality. I had Xeodrifter on 3Ds and it was great so there are some real gems in there. Tempted to get it again because it is so cheap. Does anyone else know of good ones? Perhaps a certain Nintendo website could do an article announcing the good ones?
I was kinda hoping this article would give us a review (even just a few words) of some of the games !
@dsparil Lowest it's ever been is $4.54 and it's been on sale 4 times since it came out 2 and a half years ago: https://psprices.com/region-us/game/1805465/cat-quest
Definitely not one of those mentioned here
@0muros
Absolutely, Teslagrad for that price is an absolute bargain!
Any paid game under a dollar should be removed. It's getting cluttered in there. Why can't I opt to never see a game again that I chose to?
The eShop design is not good. There are so many great games undiscovereable in amongst far too much shovel ware. I think the following would improved the eShop.
1. User ratings. Let users rate games out of 10 stars.
2. The front page needs to show people just how many great triple A games are on the system. Categorise Triple A, Indy Highly Rated, First Party, Third Party, underrated hidden gems etc.
3. Nintendo can see which good games are not selling well, they need to put underrated hidden gems in the spotlight.
Currently the eshop front page mostly just shows nintendo first party games and a few third party and indy games. They need to make more effort at pushing third party titles. Also, they need to make it easier to browse by genre.
I still fire up Jumping Joe and Friends every now and then. Genuinely good arcade challenge.
All the Qubic games, except the puzzle one, are gone from my system already.
The Nintendo eShop has become a game and these games are the micro transactions. It adds up,as does Nintendo's 30%.
@Tandy255 You can remove the word "AAA" and I'd still be okay with that. As long as it's good, I'll happily pay full price for it. But I'm not spending $1 on something I really don't have time to play especially given my massive backlog.
This article talks about how hard it is to search for games when in reality it isn't any harder to do so than searching the ps store.
The eshop clutter has reached the point of being comparable to steam. I use Dekudeals now to browse for Switch games, and then when I find what I want to buy I just open the eshop and search for it by title. I'm perplexed that they still haven't put in any restrictions to keep developers from dumping asset flips on their platform for "19.99" and then eternally discounting them for half a cent.
Id much rather pay $50+ and have a quality title than pay a couple bucks for 10 minutes to realize the game is garbage.
@gortsi Haven't seen you around on here for a while mate, hope all's good...
ya know when I read this title I thought ya'll meant N64 titles, got my hopes up too.
@Pod
“ Personally, I find very few games that way. I usually know what I'm looking for before I go to the eShop.”
Absolutely this.
@WiltonRoots hey dude, all's well, I've found that playing Switch games is a better use of my time than commenting here although I've been tempted a few times! Hope all's well with you, a while ago you gave me your SW friend code but I can't seem to find it, mind sending it again so I can add you?
@hemonecrophagia @GetShulked @BatwingLegend7 @Toshiro_Baloney I think NL is knowingly trolling a little bit with the headline. Typically you would say ‘Over 60 titles....’. Especially when this count is fluid. I doubt it stays at exactly ‘64 games for under a dollar’ for long.
You do have economies of scale. If you sell many copies of a title, you can be profitable with low profit margins. It is partly why some free to play games are very profitable.
Ok, so it's a bit but than a quid, but Grim Fandango is currently £2.87. Nintendolife gave it 9/10 when reviewing at the full price of £11.49, so atm this is a steal (until 16/1).
@gortsi Yep I will pass it on next time I use my Switch...it hasn't changed much round here to be honest, the same old broken records are still the same old broken records, the meltdown merchants continue to have meltdowns, and as soon as one set of clowns disappear another couple come and take their place.
@WiltonRoots not too bad compared to 2014-2016, what a nightmare that period was! At least now it's a bit more contained!
"But is that good or bad?"
Its good for the consumer, especially since games on the nintendo e-shops are always overpriced.
@gortsi Car Quest with an R not Cat Quest with a T.
@dsparil I had no idea a game called Car Quest existed! Thanks for bringing it to my attention
Tap here to load 91 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...