Opinion: Nintendo Needs To Let Us Block The Crap On Switch 2’s eShop

That was a long time ago, though. These days wading through the swill is an absolute chore. It’s an old complaint at this point, but it’s just as valid as ever. To illustrate the typical composition of a weekly eShop drop (beyond the bigger first- and third-party releases), here’s a list of games I’ve made up that runs the gamut, genre-wise:

• Angry Neighbor Simulator
• Axe Champ Shoot Out
• Ball Rush 2
• Ecchi Oppai
• Games Advent Calendar 2024 Bundle
• Glimmer and the Dark Halloween Pumpkin
• Hentai Girls: Racy Rabbit
• Hentai Waifu 2
• Love Anime Boys Club: Language and Date Zodiac Signs
• Magical Bakery
• Me and gamer girl
• Nurse Call
• Overheat: Kitchen Chaos
• Photography Guide: Mastering the Art of Capturing Moments
• Relaxation Techniques: How to Find Calm
• Santa’s Spot It
• Skater Bunny Simulator
• Spot The Difference Christmas
• Survive Undead Rush
• Symmetrical logic puzzles 1000
• Unsolved Case: Killer Popularity CE

Think that’s an exaggeration? Well get ready for the rug-pull that you probably saw coming: every one of those games is real. Psych!

All of those titles launched in the space of one week (well, eight days) back in November. The Christmas-themed ones aside, they give a pretty good overview of the genre makeup of weekly eShop arrivals. I can’t speak to the quality of them, and I’m willing to concede that there could be a gem or two in there. Maybe that shameless Overcooked clone is quite good, or perhaps bosom-heavy sliding puzzler Hentai Girls: Racy Rabbit hits highs that eluded the 34 other entries in the Hentai/Anime/Sugoi Girls series published by Pakotime so far this year. It’s possible.

Depressing, isn’t it? Once again, to be 100% clear, it’s not the topic or genre that’s the issue here — I’ve got zero problems with having Hentai Warrior 4: Pretty Girl GoGo Big Time or anything else on Switch — it’s the cynical way the software is being pumped out and how it drowns out other games. Increasingly, the price of operating in the modern world, real or digital, is wading through a sludge of pop-ups, batting away ads and cynical products, and it really needn’t be this awful. It’s time that Nintendo gave us the tools to push back the rubbish.

Filters would be a good start, being able to sift out publishers or developers that consistently put out games I don’t want to see, let alone play. It’s easy to imagine publishers not wanting that — someone with a grudge against, say, EA or Ubisoft could wipe their catalogues from their personal eShop. But as a platform holder, Nintendo should be serving players first. I’d never buy anything from Aldora Games’ catalogue but more than that, just having to scroll through them makes navigating the eShop unpleasant. My experience would be better without them there, and I should be able to remove them.

Alternatively (or additionally), why not let us ‘block’ games on an individual basis? If I own something already, I don’t need to see it. Thief Simulator is $1.99 again, is it? Well, I didn’t buy it the last 300 times – I’m not interested, so let me hide it and just see games I might be interested in.

The eShop isn’t totally without helpful features. The New/Recent Releases tab does what it says on the tin, highlighting everything you’d expect. If you want to find last week’s big new releases, though, you’ve got to scroll through 30 lines of bilge. There’s so much more that could be done. Requiring developers to flag the use of generative AI, for instance, as Itch.io now does, and enabling us to filter that out would be extremely useful.