Nine years after launch, Nintendo has finally updated the eShop on the original Switch, making it a less all-around terrible experience.
Nintendo released new firmware for the Switch and Switch 2 earlier today, and while the Switch 2 portion of the patch notes is a bit boring compared to the excellent Handheld Boost Mode update released earlier this year, the Switch 1 is the real winner. As noted on the Nintendo website, Switch firmware update ver 22.5.0 is headlined with the news that "the Nintendo eShop layout has been redesigned."
While there's a note of the eShop now using dark mode if your console is set to that, thankfully that isn't the extent of the changes to the eShop for Switch 1 users. As spotted by Vooks, Nintendo has updated the Switch eShop to behave like it does on the Switch 2. Formerly, the eShop used a web-based app as opposed to a native part of the console, hence why it was so slow, whereas the Switch 2 has an app built into the console.
Now that Nintendo has made this change, users are reporting that the Switch eShop is loading faster than it ever has in the console's nearly 10-year life.
Look at it gooooooo
— @vook64.bsky.social ( @vook64.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-06-16T14:16:18.437Z
Of course, it doesn't solve the biggest issue with the eShop, which is the sheer amount of trash allowed onto the system. So, you'll still be seeing all the AI slop, borderline pornographic titles, and general shovelware that plagues pretty much every storefront these days. And while PlayStation and Steam suffer a lot from this too, Nintendo's interface does a particularly poor job of surfacing games that actually deserve attention as opposed to low-effort cashgrabs.