Some people may argue that digital game stores peaked with the Wii Shop Channel back in 2006, and it seems you can add Switch 2 producer Kouichi Kawamoto to the list of the app's fans. Kawamoto was quite emphatic that the Switch 2 eShop should offer a shopping experience to match the one on Wii.
"Maybe this is a little bit controversial, but in terms of applications on the Wii, I probably booted the Wii shopping channel the most out of any application," Kawamoto said during a roundtable interview with press after the reveal of Switch 2. "So when it comes to the eShop, I wanted to make sure that it was a smooth experience, that the scrolling of the list doesn't stop, that it's very smooth, pages load fast. These are all requests that I made to the team in great detail and great amounts."
Switch 2 technical director Tetsuya Sasaki added that, with all those requests, "everybody gathered to put all their forces together to make Mr. Kawamoto happy," including "the team that created the network service, the team that was in charge of the infrastructure, the teams that were in charge of the server app, [and] the team that was in charge of the client side of the software."
Nintendo hasn't shown exactly what the new eShop looks like, but in an official Q&A the devs noted that it "runs smoothly even when displaying a large number of games," and that there's a new feature called "Game Finds for You, which lets you quickly see screenshots and watch introduction videos for games."
The promise of smoother scrolling alone is nice, as the original Switch eShop tends to chug these days, but personally I'm also hopeful that some of the Wii Shop Channel's personality is back this go-round. What I'm really saying is that it's been too long since we've had a catchy muzak track to inspire our digital video game shopping.
Hopefully the Switch 2 eShop will give us a good way to buy all those upcoming Switch 2 games.
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