Recently whilst twiddling our thumbs waiting for Switch 2 to be announced, we got thinking about the state of the current Switch’s eShop. It’s long been bemoaned for being painfully slow and containing a ‘large shedful’ of shovelware titles.
After pondering what could be done about this, I posted a skeet (eugh) to see what the community thought were the main issues.
A ton of replies later, the message was pretty clear about what people wanted to see. They were: Content Filters (too much shovelware, asset-flips and hentai games); Better Discoverability (lack of options to browse the catalogue); User Reviews (no ability to review or rate games for others to see); Faster (load times are slow and painful to browse); Shopping Cart (no ability to add items to a cart/basket); Music (the Wii and Wii U had tunes!).
All of those requests sounded pretty reasonable, so, a week of effort later, we have created the Better eShop.
Introducing the “Better eShop”
As detailed on the About page, Better eShop has the following features:
- We’ve created customisable Filters that automatically filter out “spam” games for you, you can help us categorise games by using the ‘Report’ button.
- We’ve replicated (as best we can) the existing discoverability on the eShop, whilst adding more of our own. Please share your feedback and ideas on different ways to browse games and we’ll build those in.
- On game pages, you will find both our own Nintendo Life review (if we’ve reviewed it) and you can now submit user reviews of 50-250 words, along with a score, which all ties into our Nintendo Life game collection system.
- Obviously, we’ve also made the Better eShop much faster to browse, added a dark mode, and optimised it for mobile.
- We’ve added a Cart/Basket system (kind of). You can add/remove games to/from your cart, however as a limitation of the actual eShop you will still need to buy each game individually.
- Finally, we added music (if you so wish).
Now, we aren’t the first to create an eShop alternative, however, we believe this first step will get us ready for Switch 2 and whatever Nintendo decides to do with its digital storefront.
It’s highly unlikely that Nintendo will impose any style of quality control, which is where Better eShop comes into play. We also want to heavily involve you, our community, in keeping tabs on the spam in the eShop, together we can filter it all out.
What Next?
Assuming you find Better eShop useful, we’ll continue to flesh out the database and add new features along the way. We’ve already got a few in mind such as wishlisting, additional regions and a ‘Your Reviews’ page.
We’d love for you to have a play with Better eShop and let us know your thoughts, ideas and suggestions in the comments below.