Nintendo is finally giving Nintendo Switch 2 owners a direct way to buy digital games for other people, and it’s a feature I’ve wanted to see on the Switch eShop for a long time. Announced on November 9, the new gifting option is coming to both Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 during the week of November 16. Players will be able to purchase eligible games, DLC, and upgrade packs for someone else, rather than sending an eShop gift card and leaving that person to complete the purchase. It’s a welcome change, especially with the holiday season approaching. There’s a catch, though: the recipient has to be in the sender’s Nintendo Account family group.
That requirement takes some of the excitement out of the announcement for me. Nintendo already lets players build friends lists, so those contacts seem like the natural people to send games to. I can imagine wanting to surprise a friend with a co-op game so we could play together that evening, or picking up a smaller title I think they’d love. Under Nintendo’s new rules, having someone on my Switch 2 friends list won’t be enough. The two of us would also need to belong to the same family group, which can hold only eight Nintendo Accounts in total. For a feature built around giving presents, that’s an awkward place to draw the line.
Nintendo Switch 2’s Digital Gifting Makes Sense for Families, but Not Every Friend
To Nintendo’s credit, the actual gifting process sounds refreshingly straightforward. On an eligible Nintendo eShop product page, buyers can check a “Give as a Gift” option, choose someone from their family group, and select which of that person’s linked consoles should receive it. There’s even a choice of gift wrapping before checkout. The present then appears on the recipient’s HOME Menu, ready to be accepted and played. Parents buying games for their children stand to benefit immediately, and I like that the recipient gets a specific game instead of a code or store credit. Giving a friend a game should be easier than reorganizing a Nintendo Account family group.
Guess the games from the emojis.
The problem is that a Nintendo family group isn’t the same thing as a circle of gaming friends. A group can include ordinary accounts, so Nintendo isn’t insisting that everyone be related. But its eight-person limit includes the administrator, and each account can belong to only one group at a time. Someone whose group already includes family members may have no room for the friends they play with most often. Switching groups just to buy a birthday present isn’t a great solution, either. Nintendo warns that repeatedly joining and leaving groups can trigger restrictions, while changing groups can affect who receives benefits from a Nintendo Switch Online family membership. That’s a lot of account management for something as simple as buying somebody a game.
Giving a friend a game should be easier than reorganizing a Nintendo Account family group.
What makes the restriction especially strange is that Nintendo solved part of this problem nearly 19 years ago. Back in December 2007, the Wii Shop Channel added an option to purchase eligible downloadable games for registered Wii Friends. Players could choose a game, select a friend, and send it as a present. The store even warned customers when their chosen recipient already owned the game, which helped avoid duplicate purchases. That system had limits of its own: both Wii consoles needed the same country setting, and gifting only covered supported software. Still, Nintendo didn’t require people to share a family group before one could buy a game for the other.
Other digital storefronts show why Nintendo’s approach feels behind the times. Xbox lets customers send eligible games to friends-list contacts or an email address, subject to regional rules. Steam supports gifting between friends and expanded its options in July 2026 to include purchases through shared wishlists and email delivery. Neither service is completely restriction-free, but both offer a much more natural way to send somebody a game. Nintendo has added other limits, too: supervised accounts can’t send gifts, some digital products won’t qualify, and gift purchases are subject to an unspecified frequency cap. Gifts also arrive immediately rather than on a chosen date.
Nintendo Should Let Players Send Gifts to Their Friends Lists
I can see why Nintendo started with family groups. The company already uses them for supervised accounts and household services, so they’re an existing connection between players. It’s a useful setup for parents who want to buy a game for their children without handling a gift card. What I want to see is an option for gifting directly to people on a Nintendo friends list, with sensible purchase and regional safeguards. Nintendo could keep family gifting exactly as it is while giving everyone else a much easier way to share games.
There’s a real opportunity here for Nintendo to make its digital storefront feel more social. A friend could send someone a game they’ve been talking about for weeks, or buy an extra copy of a co-op favorite so they can jump in together. I’d love to see that become a normal part of owning a Switch 2. Nintendo deserves credit for finally announcing a direct gifting feature for its current consoles, and I expect plenty of families will enjoy it. But some of the best gaming memories happen with people outside our households. The next step should be letting us buy presents for those people without asking them to join our family groups first.
