Best known for his work on Death Squared, Ash Ringrose, the head of SMG Studios took to Reddit, to lay out how he believes that Nintendo eShop could be improved.
Ash began his post by stating that some of his ideas are “practical and not so practical” and that he “tried to think greater than just what we need personally” which could prove to be a better experience for both indie developers and consumers alike. “Part of this is obviously a selfish need as we want to be get more visibility but tried to think greater than just what we need personally.”
Nintendo’s strides in creating a richer experience for the Switch eShop shows as it is much more user friendly than their previous attempts with the 3DS and Wii U. The eShop currently has four different categories for consumers to navigate: Recent Releases, Games on Sale, Best Sellers, and Coming Soon.
Ash’s notes seem to lean to a similar format to Apple’s App Store, with different genres and daily/weekly releases. He’d like to see top 100 charts and the ability to search for games using filters that would include price, ESRB rating, Digital Only, etc. Some of his other improvements would include focusing on new categories like “Editorial Top Five”, “Best of Month/Week/Daily”, and “Discover”, similar to Spotify.
“obviously a selfish need — but tried to think greater than just what we need personally”
Some of the “not so practical ideas” suggest that Nintendo should integrate a form of social media/community. This would allow users to follow their favorite developer or publisher and allow developers to “recommend other games on the store we like and people should check out” and “Link through to news articles from store page.”
While I like the idea of the Nintendo Switch’s eShop looking similar to Steam, the last time that Nintendo tried to make a community-driven ecosystem, the Miiverse was born. With Nintendo firing on all cylinders with the Switch, perhaps their second attempt could pull off a Steam-like ecosystem.
What do you think about Ash’s ideas? Would they contribute to improving the Switch eShop, or do you think the changes would only clutter the screen?
