How the Switch 2 eShop changes discoverability!
We look on-platform - plus our game jam winners, some Steam analysis for paid folks & more.
[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]
As we gear up for various ‘not-E3’ activities in Los Angeles this weekend, it’s time to wander through a large amount of things. These range from a look at Switch 2’s eShop post-launch, though some big Steam & console debuts this week (phew, Deltarune!) for our GDCo Plus & Pro subscribers. And our game jam winners are here.
Before we start, our friends at the Video Game History Foundation recently posted a video highlighting their preservation work with Cyan on classic ‘90s FMV adventures Myst & Riven. Many behind-the-scenes highlights are in the overview video, but all of this great videos & ephemera have been digitized and are available for browsing.
Discovery news: Nightreign vies with Switch 2…
OK, so before lots more news kicks off this afternoon with Summer Game Fest, let’s look at the NOW headlines, pronto:
The latest Footprints.gg ‘trad media’ coverage overview is headed, of course, by ridiculous amounts of Switch 2 articles. But the amount of Elden Ring Nightreign coverage is notable, as well as stories on The Witcher 4 (tech demo) & EA’s Black Panther game (canceled, aw.)
Sony dropped a State Of Play streaming showcase yesterday, and here’s the full set of announcements, the surprise being an Arc (Guilty Gear) x PlayStation co-op for a Marvel 2D fighting game. But overall, it was a strong, third-party led non-GaaS showcase for PS5, inc. new Bloodstained and Lumines games, IO’s James Bond title, a Final Fantasy Tactics remaster, and more on Silent Hill F.
Valve rolled out a new visual editor for Steam events & announcements, including an image carousel option, easy buttons for text formatting and image insertion & more. They add: “In 2024 alone, Steam saw developers post a combined 265,009 news, updates, and announcement posts, which were read by players a total of 2.3 billion times.”
The Game Business’ interview with Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney caught our attention, since he said experience-specific IAP may not come to Fortnite: “You go play another [Roblox] mode or into another… experience, and it doesn't work. That's something we are worried about as a concept.” It’s… working for Roblox, tho? But yes, Sweeney has a much bigger, more complex metaverse vision…
Talking of Fortnite, we recommend reading the ‘How Discover Works’ article on Epic’s dev site. It’s a rare, 100% transparent look into how islands are surfaced, including metrics on attraction, retention & satisfaction, and a Sophistication Score for discovery testing prioritization, based on in-game code usage (!)
Microlinks: the ESA’s annual report says 205 million Americans play video games, with 28% of them being 50 or older; the game-related winners of the Apple Design Awards include Balatro & Infinity Nikki; early Xbox Game Pass additions for June include EA Sports FC 25, The Alters, FBC: Firebreak & more.
The question of whether Black Myth Wukong had a paid console-exclusive period on PlayStation (separately of any Series S tech issues!) has been answered by the Xbox Series version being announced for August 20th, 2025, exactly 365 days after it launched on PS5 and PC. (Way to telegraph it, guys!)
Ben Sarraille, who plays in the Roblox/Minecraft space, says ‘Why is the industry afraid of Roblox?’, saying: “While games may rise and fall on Roblox, the platform has been steadily growing ~20% YoY for years now, and in 1Q25 reported more than $1B in creator payouts over the last 12 months.” (We’re planning to cover Roblox more.)
May’s top-grossing mobile games? A lot of the usual suspects: Honor Of Kings (almost all Asia-led!), Whiteout Survival, LastWar, Royal Match, PUBG Mobile, Candy Crush Saga, Monopoly Go. It’s still fascinating, tho. (And the ubiquitous Block Blast!, Roblox and Subway Surfers lead the most-downloaded games charts.)
What really happens to influencer coverage of other games when big games - like GTA VI - launch? Stream Hatchet tried to break down the launch of Elden Ring and other titles, concluding that “the demand for hyped game launches seems to last 6-8 weeks at most”, and is - except in extremes - limited to more direct comps.
Two interesting op-eds: veteran Rich Vogel on how to manage live-ops burnout, important in today’s market - ‘allow designers to switch up their work’ is a great tip; Ethan Levy imagines “the jank AI-pocalypse that will swallow the the games industry.” (Not sold, but player-led UGC - with or without AI - may do a similar job.)
ICYMI: yes, Apple lost its emergency application to challenge ‘link out to web stores’ U.S. iOS App Store changes. A big deal, even outside of games: “Amazon’s iPhone Kindle app now shows an orange “Get Book” button that links to Amazon.com.” And yes, Epic’s Sweeney then sh*tposted re: ending the “long national nightmare of the Apple tax”, gotta love him.
How the Switch 2 eShop changes discoverability!
Since GameDiscoverCo (and many of you) got the first chance to see the Switch 2 yesterday, we’ve been poring over the menus to see how everything works. (Store navigability is a major part of discovery, after all!)
We already covered the major Switch 1 eShop change - shifting default charts from ‘14 day downloads’ to ‘3 day revenue’ - on May 2nd when it happened. At the time, we noted: “we’re 95% sure this new chart format appears on Switch 2 too, given ‘include Switch 2 games’ tickboxes appeared with this [Switch 1] OS update.” So what did we find? This:
The Switch 1/Switch 2 eShop charts are essentially the same: you can see it in the above pic from the U.S. eShop Game Deals page, but all charts include both Switch and Switch 2 games. Switch 2 exclusives include a small red border with the Switch 2 logo on it. Fascinatingly, you also see Switch 2 games (as default) on the Switch 1 eShop charts - with a tickbox to turn them off. (Upsell tool?)
The ‘Best sellers’ view as default also came across to the Switch 2: feel free to read our analysis of this change, but defaulting ‘3 day revenue’ advantages larger, more expensive eShop games - while casting out some of the sometimes low-quality titles with 90% discounts. (The ‘downloadable titles only’ tab is gone too, btw.)
The Switch 1 eShop navigation slowness has been completely removed: the slow scroll and refresh of the eShop, especially when scrolling down a long way, doesn’t happen on Switch 2. (We presume the store was both partially re-coded, and runs faster due to the extra horsepower in Switch 2.)
Our takeaways from this? First, if your games are already selling well on Switch, they’ll appear quite prominently on Switch 2. (Punctuated by Switch 2 exclusives.) And second, there’s no way to sort only by Switch 2 games. With the charts likely using both Switch 1 and Switch 2 sales data, that may disadvantage smaller S2 games.
Let’s move on to new - or newly highlighted - features, though. First, here’s a look at the much more prominent Wish List page on Switch 2. This used to be buried in the ‘Account Info’ page on Switch 1, and is now one of the top 4 options on the nav:
Two of the other top 4 nav items - Featured & Search/Browse* on the U.S. eShop - are very straightforward and similar to their Switch 1 counterparts. (*’Featured’ is named ‘Highlights’ on the UK eShop, BTW - we can’t believe Nintendo Europe and U.S. are still varying eShop English navigation terms. You guyyyyyys.)
Which brings us to the most interesting Switch 2-exclusive navigation tool - ‘For You’. Refresher: this tool is a personalized recommender which shows you full-screen trailers of 10 Switch 1 or 2 games, with easy Buy or Wishlist options. Main screen:
Interestingly, it also shows the reason - or the multiple reasons - why games were recommended in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is certainly a step beyond anything Nintendo has ever offered before - and similar to some of Steam’s Discovery Queue work.
My colleague Alejandro identified all the criteria: “‘Similar to games you've played’, "Trending" (if game is inside the Top 50 selling games), ‘From a genre you like’, ‘From a publisher you like’, ‘Matches your interests’ (if you’ve already wishlisted it) and finally: ‘Played by your friends’ (actually naming the friend or friends who’ve played it).”
And then, when you’ve paged through the 10 trailers, you get an easy summary of recommendations, with the ability to wishlist or buy them all in one place:
The above recommendations aren’t super diverse, but Alejandro mainly plays first-party titles. So what do you get if you have a bigger library? We asked in the GDCo Plus Discord, and Bruno from Ishtar Games kindly shared what he got:
“Boxboy! + Boxgirl!; Super Meat Boy; Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney; Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc; Baba is You; Jackbox Party Pack 3; Arms; Picross S3; Bridge Constructor Portal; Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy.”
So we’re starting to get the vibes, now - plenty of third party catalog titles & older games, games that have sold well, but not 100% the ‘usual suspects’. (Baba is You is great to see on there!) We also saw a more indie-focused set of recommendations which included Conduct Together on it - again, older games, but not obvious ones.
Oh, and before we go, a bonus pic. We realized that the preview screenshot of the Switch 2 eShop Nintendo put out actually had different text on it. The final, simplified & shorter nav links are definitely better. Here’s the before and after:
GDCo x Oakland Ballers - our game jam results!
For those who didn’t spot it - back in April, GameDiscoverCo announced it was sponsoring our local Bay Area independent minor league baseball team, the Oakland Ballers. Why, besides their adorable ‘rally possum’ mascot Scrappy? As we said: “we know that many industries are global. But where you work and live, physically, still matters.”
But we brought the Scrappy-verse to you all too, with our Itch.io-hosted Scrappy Game Jam, which lasted 10 days and pulled in >30 interested parties and ~15 game entries. Judging it was a lot of fun, and you should check out all of the entries!
GDCo ended up needing to pick one overall winner ($) and five total honorees (getting lifetime GDCo Pro subscritions!), all playable in-browser, and those were:
1st place: Scrappy's Fastball Frenzy (great Wario Ware Inc-ish mini-game collection!)
2nd-5th place: Base Ballin' With Scrappy (physics-y roguelite ball-hittin'), Super Scrappy Golf Day (2D mini-golf madness), Scrappy In : Attack Of The Vengeful Raccoons! (save the bleachers in a raccoon rumble), Scrappy's Way Home (super-fun platformer.)
The winners were featured on the big screen at the Ballers game on June 1st - where Scrappy recapped his origin story, got several birthday cards and a garbage cake (mmm, garbage), and generally jammed out. To conclude: yes, we’re the kind of company who sponsors a trash possum baseball mascot game jam, what of it?
This week on Steam: Deltarune (& early Dune!)
