Nintendo has released a new store app on Android and iOS giving users the ability to purchase hardware, accessories, and games for the Switch and Switch 2. When I open my phone and scroll down to the N’s, I get a neat, full row dedicated entirely to Nintendo. That’s four apps: the Switch app, the music app, the Nintendo Today news app, and now the store. (The tally increases to five if you’re a parent using the Switch Parental Controls app.) And it is entirely too much.
Nintendo has always been the one company of the big three publishers that does its own thing, and that’s worked both for and against it. The company hasn’t chased development trends with the same zeal as Microsoft and Sony. That insulates Nintendo when those trends don’t pan out, like exorbitant spending on live-service games that fail. But also hurts it when it comes to performance and user experience. Console-native voice chat, for example, has been a standard on other platforms for a long time, but was only offered on a Nintendo console with the Switch 2 this year.
With the deployment of these apps, Nintendo is both trying to innovate and playing catch-up with results that feel confusing and overwhelming. Do we really need four distinct apps? That’s not to say these apps shouldn’t exist; they serve valuable and necessary purposes. But when I look at all the programs I have to manage in my Nintendo life, it just feels like it’s too much.
You need the Switch app for screen captures and social features. You need the store to buy things. While one doesn’t need the Nintendo Today app, it does have useful features, like release date reminders, and it has been used to share announcements before they come down other official channels. The music app also isn’t a hard need, but Nintendo doesn’t make its music available on streaming services, and searching YouTube for music can be hit or miss.
It’s also strange that the apps cannibalize features. I can see my play activity in both the store and the console app. The store also has a news page that’s more robust than what’s on offer in Nintendo Today. Could we not just combine all these into one central location? PlayStation and Xbox do in their apps, and it’s a seamless experience to jump from my PS5 screenshots to the PS Store.
Image: Nintendo
I will grant that the music app should be kept separate, as it seems a bit unwieldy to throw a music player on top of what should be a singular administrative app. But even that feels like it’s an overcomplicated solution to a simple problem. Nintendo is precious about its IP, sure, but why does that have to mean that instead of listening to official tracks on Spotify I have to download a bespoke app just for one company’s library? Since using the music app requires a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, I wonder if siloing its music like this is a way to enhance the appeal of its subscription. I also wonder if it has anything to do with a reticence to pay royalties. In the music app, Nintendo doesn’t credit composers, something it’d be required to do if it offered its music up to streaming services.
As the gaming industry continues to mature, companies are realizing that not only are they in competition with other game makers for people’s time and attention, but with social media too. And while other companies try strategies like bringing their exclusives to other platforms, Nintendo seems to be going in a much more ambitious direction.
Earlier this week, in a statement posted on Nintendo’s investor relations website, president Shuntaro Furukawa wrote, “We hope for Nintendo to be a name that people naturally turn to, part of everyday life and there for families as they grow.” You can see that strategy in products like the Alarmo, the My Mario children’s line, its animation and movie projects, theme parks, and Hello, Mario, yet another app designed specifically for kids. That’s a lot to have going on, and it’s clear that some strategies seem to be working. But if Nintendo isn’t more careful about how (and how much) it’s deploying these apps, people are gonna start clearing up space — if not in their lives, then at least in their phones.