Switch 2's Most Boring New Features Could Be Its Best
It’s the little things that count.
After the latest Nintendo Direct, we know an awful lot about the Switch 2, from its surprisingly beefy specs to the equally surprising prices of some first-party games. Unexpected features like built-in voice chat and game sharing were revealed, all making the console a lot more exciting (except for the price thing). But with all that, some of my favorite parts of the Switch 2 are a couple of objectively more boring points Nintendo only revealed afterward.
Two of my biggest daily frustrations with the original Switch — and I know I’m not alone here — are its lackluster screenshot sharing features and the near-uselessness of the eShop. Neither are headline-making features and neither makes the Switch experience so bad I’m tempted to stop using it, but both could benefit from small fixes that would make the Switch altogether more pleasant to use. Fortunately, Nintendo is aiming to improve both with the Switch 2.
Nintendo Direct showed off the biggest Switch 2 features, but not all of them.
Do you remember the good old days when you could share screenshots from your consoles to Twitter, before Elon Musk renamed it and turned it into a digital cesspool from which no one emerges unscathed? It’s far from the platform’s worst change, but one casualty of Musk’s ownership is that console makers all turned off the ability to share captures to the site directly from your console. With that gone, your sharing options are to either connect the Switch to your computer via USB cable or scan a QR code to upload them to your smartphone, the latter of which has never once worked for me in the console’s history.
That’s changing with the Switch 2. Along with the console’s launch, the current Nintendo Switch Online App is changing its name to the Nintendo Switch App, and getting new features, like an easier way to manage your friends list. Screenshots are also getting an app-based upgrade. When viewing a screenshot on your Switch 2, you’ll be able to upload to the Switch App with the press of a button, then either save it to whatever device you’re using the app on or post it straight to social media. Nintendo hasn’t said exactly which social media platforms that means, but either way, it’s a huge improvement. It may not be a big deal if you don’t share many screenshots or don’t find the current process as onerous as I do, but I’d personally love to share more images without pulling out a USB cable or fighting with a QR code to work.
The Switch 2 eShop already looks like a big improvement for Nintendo’s digital storefront.
Another change is likely to affect just about everybody who uses the Switch 2, aside from a few of the world’s most dedicated physical media purists. For all the Switch it has going for it, it’s also burdened with an abysmal digital storefront, known as the eShop. The eShop is close to universally acknowledged as an irritating, poorly organized mess that makes searching for games a chore. It’s also unbelievably laggy and stuffed to the brim with knock-off clones and low-effort hentai games.
We don’t know everything about the new eShop yet, but in an interview shared after the Direct, Nintendo executives working on the Switch 2 say the new console will see a storefront update. The Switch 2’s better hardware will reportedly make scrolling the eShop much smoother, and Nintendo is also putting some effort into making games easier to find. A new feature called Game Finds for You will update weekly with new recommendations based on preferences you set in the app. Nintendo shared a video of the feature, which shows a scrollable collection of trailers for recommended games along with their store pages, and it does in fact look much smoother than anything on the current eShop.
Obviously these aren’t the kind of features that convince people to buy consoles, especially unexpectedly pricey ones with $80 first-party games. But it’s the little details that define the day-to-day experience of actually using a console, and not making players work so hard to buy games or share screenshots will go a long way toward making the Switch 2 better to use. Now let’s just hope we can convince Nintendo to bring back 3DS-style themes for the home screen.
