Switch eShop gets new features to make discovering new games easier

One of the major criticisms of the Switch since it rose to popularity after launch was that the eShop was severely lacking in features. Despite some small updates here and there — like the Charts tab and PayPal support — it’s always been tough to discover new games, especially when there’s up to 30 games releasing on it each week. Today, Nintendo has taken steps to make the eShop a bit better.

If you open up the eShop today, you’ll likely notice two new things. The first is a Discover tab. The Discover tab works a bit like the News feature on the Switch’s home screen, in that it’s a collection of curated posts, showing you good deals, Nintendo’s top pick for the week, details about available DLC, and a bunch of highlighted recent releases. It’s a big score for Switch owners, who’ve long been asking for an easier way to know what’s worth picking up.

The second is a less useful feature, but it’s definitely interesting. The Charts tab in the eShop now has two separate categories, one for all games, and one for games that download exclusives. This isn’t quite as useful as the Discover feature, but it should help give buyers a little more information about the games they’re interested in picking up. One might see a game like Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze in the eShop charts, for example, but see that it’s only in the “all games” section. This gives them the opportunity to seek out a better price at a retail store. All in all, a win for people who like to shop around for a good deal.

Update: After poking around for a bit, we’ve discovered a few new changes to other sections of the eShop. The New Releases tab now shows 60 titles instead of 30 — a very good thing, since there are often 30 or more releases that drop on a single day. On a game’s store page, you can now select the publisher’s name to see a list of all the games they’ve published, which is good for folks who find a game they like already and want more from the same publisher/developer. The updated Charts page also features the top 30 titles instead of the previous 15. And finally, there’s a new section in the account settings for Automatic Renewal Settings, most likely in preparation for the Nintendo Switch Online service, which is due to launch in September.

The eShop still has quite a way to go to be perfect, but updates like this go a long way in helping ease the pain of sorting through hundreds of titles to find a game that really suits them. It’s a good move, and it’s good to see Nintendo doing something to make their platform more appealing — both for buyers and for developers.