Today, Nintendo launched a new Store app for mobile phones that lets you wishlist, search for, and buy Switch and Switch 2 games on your phone. And that’s neat, but uh, why is this a separate app? Why does Nintendo keep insisting that you need one app to listen to music, another one to handle parental controls, and yet a few more to buy games, get news, and manage your Switch 2 console? It’s getting ridiculous.
On November 5, the Nintendo Store App was released on mobile phones, letting users check out the Switch and Switch 2 eShop and even dig into some really interesting playtime data that the Mario maker has been collecting for years. Yet, it also means Nintendo now has five separate non-gaming apps.
- Nintendo Switch App
- Nintendo Music App
- Nintendo Today!
- Nintendo Switch Parental Controls
- Nintendo Store App
Want to see which of your friends are online or manage your screenshots? Use the Switch mobile app. Want to buy a Switch 2 game on your phone? Well, download the newly released store app and use that. Also, the store app just opens a browser when you try to buy a game, so it’s not even that useful. Want to manage your console’s parental controls? Guess what, buddy? Go download another app. Curious about any new Nintendo news or announcements today? Fuck you, go download yet another app. Perhaps you wish to enjoy some music from your favorite Switch game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Oh, you already know what I’m going to tell you: Download another app.
It’s all so strange and unnecessary. All of these apps feel barebones and not very useful because individually, each one only offers a few options and features. I’d much rather have a single Nintendo Switch app on my phone that contains a store, a little news section, and a way to manage my console and friends list. Breaking that out across three apps is silly. I’d even shove the parental controls into the main Switch app, too. This is mostly how Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation handle it, though Sony and Microsoft also break out parental controls into separate apps like Nintendo.
Anyway, I’m excited for Nintendo to announce another new app next year that lets me change the visual settings on my Switch 2 and then another app that lets me manage my saves. I want 18 different Nintendo apps that I bounce between by 2030!