Nintendo Switch Now Has Over 6700 Third-Party Games

Nintendo Switch Has Games

I am sure people think of this when they say there is always something to play on Switch, but I have to ask; how much of the stuff on the eShop is shovelware? Browsing the eShop for games sucks. I very rarely like looking through the sales page as there is so much junk that is normally on sale for 99p, it bloats the tab.

@MS7000 use deku deals to search sales my friend. It makes finding gold amongst the dirt so much easier

Shovelwares makes up the majorities of those digits quoted i believe so. However, the very few that aren't may or may not be my cup of tea. Something for everyone though.

PLENTY of them are pretty darn good, and that's excluding masterpieces. Fans like to bark at the mythical "shovelware", but I've had many hours of fun with the sheer majority of the titles they dismiss for juvenile reasons, and out of my 830 games only two or three have left me underwhelmed to date (all of them over the course of the last couple months out of my 4.5 years with the console, too) - how's that for a ratio? Switch library is a seemingly bottomless treasure trove and it just won't stop getting deeper yet.

I found there were some lazy developers have tendency to release their games with Code in Box.
It just wasting the plastic production.
If the games cannot be released in physical media due to cartridge cost, do not ever release the games with Code in Box.
It just like a direct insult toward physical games collector.

@MS7000 you beat me too it. There is a rediculous ammount of trash on the eshop in amongst some gems and couple that with the terrible slow UI makes it a ball ache to browse the offers unless you either, have games in your watch list or know exactly what your looking for. I imagine ive missed loads of games on sale that i would have pulled the plug on if i didnt have to wait for the store to buffer every time i scroll down a line or 2.

@Neckcrane Deku Deals made my shopping experience a dream. It is actually pleasant to search for games through the website.

Now if I could just use a HIDE option for AAAAAAAAAAAAALL of that Shovelware that's CONSTANTLY plagueing the list, leaving me far less likely to discover those hidden gems.

I think Switch has plenty of great third-party games, which is exactly what Nintendo handhelds usually get. Which always makes me happy, the more variety the better.

@Rpg-lover I don't agree that only a very few of digital only games are not shovelware.

There's indeed a lot of shovelware, indeed the majority. But there are tons of great games on Switch that are digital only.

Out of the top 10 on metacritic 5 games are digital only (when you leave out the releases of limited run games).

https://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/switch/filtered

Nintendo SHOULD do something about their eshop though, shovelware tends to bloat the top 30 lists a lot with their huge discounts...

It’s a great system with an outstanding library of games. People complain about ports but to me it’s just more games on a system I use handheld and that’s a good thing.

@Friendly don't get me wrong when I said digits! What I meant is the numbers of the 3rd party games mentioned are mostly shovelwares. Not that it's all bad. 😉 something for everyone, as I will always say.

@Rpg-lover Ah! I see . Yes, i completely agree. The switch is indeed something for everyone, I'm happy Nintendo steered away from the solelie kiddie image they did tend to have (a little bit) and that they moved a little bit towards the bit older audience. (like me).

I'm curious about their next system now that the steam deck has been revealed. Although their first and second party games will lure millions of players into their ecosystem again, they have got to release at least something similar in infrastructure I think to make sure to keep their third party support as large as it currently is too.

"some" of them lol the rest are all shovelware, every sale is just over a 1000 games that are selling for less than £3 and the remaining 200 are decent games.

“Switch has no games.

“Switch only has kiddie games because it’s Nintendo.”

“Nothing but first party games.”

“Just ports and shovelware.”

@UltimateOtaku91 And 200 great games on sale each time is not enough for you?

Pah. I reckon only one in ten of those games are any good…

… so that’s 670 games or so. Gulp.

I’ve probably got about 50 on my wish list by now - and I gave up trying to keep track of the eShop about a year ago. I will never play all the games I’d like to play, but equally I will never run out of having something worth trying.

@Friendly well when you put like that 😂

Though what intend to do go on the sale page and Press sort by price, then all the non shovelware games will be first

@Friendly nintendo first party games always draws people in. No matter the hate, you will still see people buying. Maybe a spell done well by nintendo wizards 😃...

Steam deck won't stop nintendo from achieving their objectives of creating fun games for all ages in a way that some high demanding graphics games on other consoles wouldn't. If nintendo releases something with the power close to the Playstation 4 in handheld/hybrid it will blow away the steam deck..

I will get the Steam deck. However, will wait and see if it's just like my gpd win 3 in terms of generating heat and loud noise when playing handheld.

If only a place did reviews on them.

I’m sure Nintendo’s made a few coins off that bulk bin of games, but does it mean they care any more about third parties on their system than in the past? Nope. No high-end Nintendo console, Nintendo prioritizes its own games. Butters their own bread. Third parties can bring over their blurry chugging ports or not at all.. Lol

This is certainly different from their Wii U situation which only had over 600 games. To be able to get over 6000 games not counting their own and 70% of those are good quality titles shows that the Switch is going in the right direction both in terms of giving dev an easier more simpler platform to work their games on and also give consumer a more affordable way to experience triple A gaming both at home and on the go. Now all that's left for Nintendo is giving the Switch that little bit of power boost once the global chip shortage situation is over.

6700? way to little, i will look into this when they reach 10.000.

On the serious side, hwo need 6700 to choose from, like many said, 80+% is crap. While the 20% that aint crap is filled with 8 bit looking graphics games, because they are so cool.

I'll never find what interests me because the eshop is a trash heap of disorganization. Then when I do get a game..it gets lost on my switch. We need better organization on both fronts 😝

Love the switch. Huge library and flexibility of play. Something for everyone. I’m at well over 500 games now and I never run out of something to play. Eshop wishlist is at 350. Love it! I think this is my largest system game library.

Yet...no Call of Duty or Madden. lesigh

@YusseiWarrior3000 well, yeah. I meant that as in it's getting Nintendo handheld level support, which is good.

@MS7000 The Recent Releases + wish list = your best friend.

That's really the only way to use the eshop. Anything even remotely interesting Getz put on the wishlist. All else gets ignored.

@Meteoroid

I totaly agree, the library is one of the best Nintendo ever got.
My point was that a small % of all these games are actually worth playing.

Deku Deals is a life saver!

Searching the games list on the Switch eshop is an absolute embarrassment. I don't know how Nintendo could ever release such a broken experience in a finished product..

It may do because the Switch eShop is like the Android store.

@Pat_trick The problem with Deku Deals is that it doesn't show all of the deals, especially the one at the very low end of the spectrum. Some publishers offer discounts on games if you already own one and that doesn't show up on Deku Deals. There are still games below the $1.99 and once in awhile even free. Some of my most played game have been in this range including games like Tharsis, Windmill Kings, Ding Dong XL, and Mini-Trains, and Robonaughts. These are games I would have never even played if not for the deep discount that made the risk almost non-existent.

I barely use the e-shop on the console to search for or even buy games. Nintendo Life, Deku Deals, Google, YouTube (e.g. Low Budget Gamer) are all much easier sources - then I buy the game while on my PC or phone instead of through the Switch.

I've discovered some great sale bargains too - perhaps games that get classed as shovelware. I've especially found party/couch games to be great sale bargains, even if only for short plays e.g. Hidden in Plain Sight, Akuto: Showdown, Death Squared, Heave Ho, Conduct Together. Full Metal Furies is a hidden gem that sadly got review bombed.

For as long as the Switch lasts, I don't need another console ever. I imagine I'll have unopened physical games and unplayed downloaded games in 10-20 years, so I hope they will all still work when I get around to trying them! I think my only reason to upgrade from the Switch will be to play the latest Zelda and maybe Mario. I haven't completed BotW and still have Crosscode, Xenoblade Chronicles, Elder Scrolls, Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed and more to try. And that's only in the Action/RPG genre.

Third-party support on the Switch is great, and yes - folders to organise those games would be very useful! How have Nintendo not implemented something that seems so simple?

@thinkhector Oh, I didn't know about that. I hope they find a way to actually show these deals.
Thanks for the info!

@Savino lol, still playing. Work and school prep keep me very busy. But I’m making a dedicated effort on my backlog. Trying not to hop around on games. It’s a good problem to have!

My real challenge is updating my games collection here and my database at home.

@Daniel36 Go to the search bar and search with a filter. For example only games above 30 bucks, most shovelware is cheap.

Even if 90% of those games were shovelware, that's still ~670 non-shovelware titles.

…and 6,500 I’m not interested in. Ten years ago Indy developers used their limitations to be creative. Now, it just feels like a bunch of coat tail riders. What was once clever is now just a trope.

@Deerock69 Switch don't need dead franchises.

@BlueMonk 'What was once clever is now just a trope.'

I think you mean cliche rather than trope here; tropes are simply tools but an overused trope becomes a cliche. But I understand the point you are making.

Luckily as a community we search out all our favourite games in any sphere and share them with each other thus making sure we avoid the pitfall of shovelware games while also being made aware of some truly hidden gems.

"It's a staggering number, and even discounting the significant numbers of low quality titles"

Huh? You CAN'T discount those, because you are literally counting them. The entire reason there is such an OMGZ WHAT A BIG NUMBER is that the eShop is filled with massive quantities of crap.

@Zadaris
I’d say trope is applicable, as I don’t think they’re necessarily over used or played out, but they certainly aren’t clever anymore.

The worst is the Roguelike fad. “Hey, we can make a game that recycles content over and over.”

When did that start, anyway? Dead Rising is my all time favorite Roguelike. That wasn’t a buzz word back then, though.

If I see Roguelike in a description now, I just walk away.

@Anti-Matter I don’t see it as an insult; a collector who loves the game might buy this copy just to have a physical representation.

@BlueMonk Hey, roguelike elements (procedural/rng) are what made F-ZERO X (X Cup) and Pikmin 2 (dungeons) so replayable and rich, in times (2004) when roguelike's weren't much of a thing. Obviously those elements were layered underneath a well-designed base game. So preferably it's great to have both in one package.

@UltimateOtaku91 yeah, browsing the eShop pages is a bad experience, I agree. Nintendo should do something about that.

Here's the rub, though: probably 6600+ of them are hot, steaming garbage. The eShop makes even the Wii's mountain of shovelware pale in comparison.

95%+ is garbage.

Using the eShop watchlist feature for games I'm interested in makes finding deals a lot easier for me. If the sale is good enough and/or it it's a game I'd play in short sessions, I'll pick it up digitally rather than pay out for the physical version.

Switch has a truly astounding number of quality games to play! But I was even able to build up my game backlog in the Wii U years, so I am in deep trouble now.

I'm somewhat surprised they stuck with the plan of letting at least 20 games through every single week.
Makes for a LOT of games over the years.

I wouldn't buy a switch as my main console as there are so many games that skip the switch I'm lucky enough to have all 3 consoles though so I can play all the games I want except next gen exclusives because I've not upgraded yet

@UltimateOtaku91 yeah it's really annoying going through all the crap looking for something decent

Not only is there a lot of shovelware, but the interface is so slow and glitchy, it’s murder to browse.

I also wish they bring back a rating system like they had at launch (even a percentage based on binary votes would help).

Thank heaven for the wishlist feature! As well as average score ratings websites and Nintendo Life!

To those that have said it's 90% shovelware, or even 99% shovelware, have you actually looked at reviews or anything for a lot of this stuff? There is a ton of quality. Maybe they're not all AAA, best game ever type games, but they are certainly fun.

Yes, there are asset flippers and shovelware pushers but that actually is a minority.

Yes, there are publishers like Forever Entertainment, Ultimate Games and Sometimes You who publish games which are all over the map on how quality they are, but that doesn't mean it's shovelware.

As many people said, I use dekudeals on a daily basis to see what's on sale and there is always something I want. Regardless of genre, there is something to play on the Switch. From Visual Novels, to platformers, to metroidvanias, to FPS games, ARPGs, JRPGs, Open World games. There is EVERYTHING. And that's without counting Nintendo.

@MS7000

Well if the Switch has 6700 3rd party games, I'm going to guess about 6500 of them are shovelware. If I'm to be more generous, than I'd say about 6300.

@Jeff2sayshi

I have definitely bought games most people would consider shovelware, but in reality, the vast majority off those 6700 3rd party games are highly likely shovelware or lazily ported mobile games that end up charging consumers 3-4 times the price of their mobile counterparts.

@UltimateOtaku91
Not every shovelware games are bad.
Sometimes smaller games are better than AAA games.

@Anti-Matter don't get me wrong I live indie games aslong as they are good and most indie games try something different that big AAA are scared to do, but by shovelware I mean the really cheap games that no effort has been put into creating and the ones that cost £3 and below

Question.. Why is the Eshop broken?

For me every game i've wanted to purchase, i've easily found and paid for. I feel like i'm missing something, as I always see that claim on this site.

@Bailey5000 Because the amount of games on it slows it to a crawl.

The only thing I wish is that purchased games would auto drop off the wishlist. About once a month I go in and clean mine up.

@MS7000 I used to browse the eShop for games and would regularly buy "indie games" I discovered.

I'd happily buy more now, but browsing the eShop is awful. They have opened the floodgates on utter rubbish and done next to nothing to help us sort and browse the games.

Nintendo literally need to hire 2 or 3 Content Managers and give them a development resource and the eShop would comfortably make them another 20%. It's very poor.

Nintendo clearly don't care though - they make a lot of money from it already.

It's a recurring theme with Switch though...

Sold a lot of Switch. Invested nothing in UX.
Sold a lot of game downloads. Invested nothing in eShop.
Sold a lot of NSO subscriptions. Invested nothing in online.

Thankfully they are releasing great games and continually investing in top quality games!

@MS7000
Lol yeah i hated that from the start, most of them are just crap. Bec of that i skipped the scrolling even tho there are some gems in there.

Doughnut County is cheap and wonderful

There are SO many great games on the eShop. I look at the new games each week and each time I add one or two (if not more) to my wishlist.

That being said, Nintendo needs to work on the eShop. Better sorting and some sort or review system would maybe help.

Really? A lot of shovel wear and crap? I don't agree with these sentiments at all! In fact, quite the opposite. I think game development is so mature right now that every game shows some level of moderate understanding of what makes a game fun. Sort of the same way that films nowadays will all have good CGI, a decent score, and decent to great acting.

I'll give you a couple of examples of games that would seem like shovel ware. I bought a game Ding Dong XL on the eShop for 10 cents (not a typo) and I put 50 hours into it. I have a game Mini-Trains that was given away for free, and I played it and was surprised by how good of an action-puzzle game it was. I have Stencil Art game that I would never have ever looked at in a million years. I got it as part of a promotion. I couldn't put it down it was so relaxing and fun to use. Then there was Windmill Kings, a defense game, a genre I hate usually. I played that game for two days straight. Also incidentally, Windmill Kings is probably THEY second hardest game to complete. The difficulty ramps up and up and up as you go. It will give Jump King a run for its money.
The hardest game on the eShop though is probably High Noon Revolver, the game cannot be beaten. I mean that literally. The game suffers from a serious bug that prevents anyone from getting past the third level. It's probably not well known because getting to third level is EXTREMELY HARD LOL. I am not kidding that game is no joke with just two levels to get thru. That's my rant on the subject.

@Deerock69 Well Dreamcast doesn't had either and it's doing just fine.

@Ryu_Niiyama Yeah I also wish they implement a cart system like PSN does, it's really a hassle to have to purchase and download all the games I want on the eShop one by one and not altogether in one go.