Is Nintendo Eshop the worst store? Probably ever?

Nintendo are not good at anything aside from ripping off consumers.

Games drop into obscurity on the eshop.

As far as the overall appearance and ease of use, I like the eshop just fine.

But the prices are ridiculous, Nintendo is clearly taking advantage of the situation where they have a digital monopoly on their hardware; a problem I've brought up in the past about an all digital future.

It's funny, because PSN and Live typically have higher prices than retail or PC digital stores, BUT they at least have sales frequently.

It's got a nice clean and simple UI. I dig it.

Complaining about prices? Poor gamers being poor again. I've gotten plenty of great deals in the deal section and the gold points have given me extra discounts. Do the others even have something comparable to gold points?

Nintendo still has a lot of work to do on their online front.

The eshop has sales, frequently, every week.

The eshop is far more organised than steam. Not as laggy for me either. Each has a ton of indies on offer, but Nintendo does a better job of showcasing different stuff. Much prefer the retail and download charts also. Steam is cheaper though.

Possibly. Haven't checked out Sony's, but I hate Microsoft's UI filled with clutter.

"The retail and digital version needs to have the same price".

That doesn't make sense. It's apparently to make physical stores to not get abandoned. "No one would buy the game on GameStop if it was cheaper on the eshop". Yeah ok, but we are currently buying everything cheaper digitally on all places but Nintendo's eshop. So.. I still don't get it. Has Nintendo decided to be the lord and savior of physical gamestores? If so...why?

Yup, it's complete garbage.

Let's see how sheep will spin this shit.

@knight-k: Orly?

Has a much better search function than PSN, plus you don't have to log into the browser version of the store page to be able to use wishlists.

Nintendo Eshop isn't the worst shop once you get to know how to use it and not think about the bad parts but that's just me. But even then, I know it's not perfect.

(Nobody seems to be able to make a decent storefront for their consoles. Sony is honestly even worse. Hell, PS4 store can't even get "Searching" right, it's such an awful mess that I just use my PC and tell it to download whatever I tell it to my PS4)

Not really. I quite like how it looks and works. Minimalistic, smooth and quick. Much like the rest of the Switch OS.

Plus, there are discounts on a ton of games at any given time.

Worst of the large platforms, perhaps. I’m still irked that my PayPal won’t process on eShop while never having an issue elsewhere.

I'd like to see more filters. The store is otherwise the best of them - clean, simple, no bullshit. Get in, see game pretty easily, buy game, leave.

Price and storage space are a separate issue IMO. They represent the elevated prices across physical and digital games that Nintendo adopts, and they represent a hardware limitation (that is also easily remedied for $20, BTW - I got 128GB for 20 bucks. For real. Barely an issue). I think those are shortcomings that are related to but not the same issue as the quality of the store itself.

From the jist if it, I think he was saying he was forced to by the Publisher. Donno, could be wrong.

The search features and general UI of the Eshop is pretty rough compared to the competition, but it's in no way as bad as the Wii's.

The thing about Nintendo is that they historically spend very little time focusing on the rest of the game industry, leaving them to their own internal ideas on how to design and produce different aspects of their products. The upside is that Nintendo continues to innovate and create products unlike anything else in the industry. The downside is that they're often behind in terms of basic QOL features that seem like a no brainer.

The difficulty is keeping their unique approach to hardware and software, but also remaining current and relevant without letting trends or competition infiltrate their creative process.

We can argue all day about ways they can do it better, but if we could do what they do, we wouldn't be talking about it on a message board with strangers.

Nope.

The worst shop ever is/was WiiWare.

Not only was the UI horribly BAD, but you spent points for your games which you purchased with real money. And a lot of times you would have points left over after a purchase which were non-refundable, meaning you always had money tied up in that shop you couldn't use until you purchased more points towards something else. And if you didn't, well, that was lost money you couldn't recover.

Or did we just all forget about that for the sake of trying to paint the Switch out as being bad at something?

I don't know how anyone can prefer that horror show called the PSN UI. Good gravy, it's just a torture for the eyes.

I once bought a game from the eshop and it made me feel really bad, I had to take a shower.

Oh dude I love the E-Shop was just in there the other day. They got 19.99 nintendo selects for 3ds super mario maker and star fox 64 3d. Its a nice little shop I Have like every zelda game for my 3ds too I bought on there.

Yeah, agreed. Overall I actually like the design of the eshop... similar to the Switch UI, it's clean and simple. But yes, some things should be improved. With so many games coming to Switch, quality games can get buried under a mountain of sh*t titles. The quality games need to stand out (maybe create a seperate Indie store page that highlights the great titles).

As for "Nintendo never discounts it's games, always sold at full price", they have sales on every week (currently they have some of their 1st party games on sale such as Donkey Kong & Captain Toad).

These are wiiu ports. Tropical Freeze being sold at full price.

He said "Nintendo never discounts it's games, always sold at full price"... that's obviously not true.

But yes, they don't discount their games as heavily as Sony/MS.

- Same game on Steam but double the price

Steam is PC only.

- The console has so little space it can't contain many games

Buy a microSD. They're cheap.

- The user points don't really mean anything when games are so overpriced that they becomes "standard" in line with other services

Meh.

- Many, many old games decades old are being sold at prices sometimes triple that of Steam, in some cases at contemporary FULL prices

Then buy them on steam.

- Nintendo never discounts it's games, always sold at full price

Nintendo discounts it's own games after a few years with it's Player's Choice line...

- Terrible versions of EA sport titles sold at 25% higher than other services

Take it up with EA. Your 25% is wrong.

- On top of this, you have to pay for online that offers nothing, which is free on Steam

You also have to pay for PSN and Xbox Live. It offers discounts, demos, online gaming, access to the startup virtual console (which admittedly, needs work).

Would it be obvious to state the Nintendo eshop is objectively terrible and once again Nintendo fans are exploited to high heaven?

It's only $25...annually....

I'm trying to think of something good about it, but at loss.

Someone explain to me how a clean, crisp, easy to use and understand interface is "garbage."

Online is still Nintendo's weakest asset, there is no doubt about that. I hardly go onto the e-shop unless there is something I am looking for specifically.

Splatoon 2 and Mario odyssey have been on sale.

This lie needs to die.

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/02/19/deal-alert-big-nintendo-switch-games-on-sale-for-41

Mario Odyssey and Splatoon 2 on sale.

I mean are people blind or just intentionally lying?

Thats because their games continue selling long after launch. Of course Sony has to price drop Uncharted 4 when it disappears off the charts after a few short weeks. Where have GOW and Spiderman gone? Vs MK8 still selling high on the charts.

Agreed. Not just Nintendo, Capcom's re-release of a PSN game (SFIIHD) at a AAA price tag was extortionate. It's a criminals playground looking for pigeons to pluck.

As a Steam user, I feel bad for exclusively Nintendo users, they must have no idea what value is.

Well Nintendo does provide great value, but that's mostly in their polished games. But I get what you mean. If you main a Nintendo console you should supplement it with another platform so you don't miss out on some 3rd-party games.

Don't feel bad.

Steam is a bigger dump for indie trash more than any other eshop in existence.

@Bread_or_Decide: It always baffles me how people can spread misinformation about things that are so easily debunked. All it takes is a 10 second trip to the eShop.

Apple Stores are objectively the worst. Feels like walking into the wellness centre of a cult somewhere.

Aside from putting more filters in to make searching for games on the eShop better and easier I don’t think that it’s all that bad and it’s certainly not the worst ever. The storage space on the Switch has no bearing on the quality of the eShop. As for prices Nintendo has always kept the value of their games high for a long period of time and it seems to work well for them. I have seen them have regular sales for third party games and some of their first party games as well. Most every game that I see on both Microsoft’s and Nintendo’s online stores tend to be the same price from what I’ve seen.

Sure it does. If you're going to sell an (expensive) console with a digital store in mind, make sure it had adequate storage. Sony does. Microsoft does. Nintendo don't.

@uninspiredcup: No it isn’t. Sure storage space is something that you can criticize the system itself for but it has no bearing on the quality of the online service.

It directly acts as a detriment of a pre-designated symbiotic relationship.

@uninspiredcup: It still isn’t attributed to the quality of the online service though, it’s a system specific detriment.

I dunno... I buy on amazon and enter the code.

Somehow I just don't trust Nintendo with my card info.

Nintendo went out of their way to use the cheapest storage available.

And the other two have 50GB downloads and I know people with 1TB that are out of space on those things. Hardly worth bragging about.

Also, expensive console, it's the cheapest of the bunch and none of them go TV to Portable.

LOL well Nintendo is no Sony in this case. How many times has PSN been hacked and credit cards been stolen now? olol can't say that's happened with Nintendo.

Price is the only complaint out of all those bullets... I will pay a lil extra for nintendo versions of all steam games...

Eshop games all come with portability at launch

Steam does not offer portability

Yea it does. Works on laptops, shared all your data through cloud free. Can also use built in streaming to mobile devices or tv free.

Nintendo forces you to pay for cloud and steaming, which is only used because the hardware can't match it's competitors.

God, Steam so good.

lol, laptop....oh wait, you were serious?

The actual storefront is a lot better than Sony's mess, but sure, more meaningful sales would be nice.

I don't buy games digitally unless there is no physical version.

Switch has been a digital exclusive system for me. I bought everything from BotW and Smash Ultimate, to Celeste and Mario Odyssey all digitally along with roughly 20 other games so far - all on one Micro SD card. Life's been tremendous having a digital console and never having to worry about swapping out cards and lugging them around.

I preferably never want to do physical games ever again.

The Nintendo Switch Eshop?

Nah.

But it is of terrible quality.