Browsing the eShop on the Nintendo Switch is slower than molasses in January. Here’s how to find good games on Switch without relying on the eShop.
As the Nintendo eShop has grown in size, it has become harder to navigate. Every Thursday new games hit the eShop in a huge batch, but navigating new releases can be challenging if you don’t stay on top of it. And scrolling through the eShop for any length of time brings the Switch to a crawl. So how can you find good games on Switch? Most savvy Switch gamers use a website called Deku Deals.
DekuDeals highlights sales across the eShop and other physical retailers if you want. It also has a wishlist feature, so you can receive notifications when games you want go on sale beyond just the eShop. It’s an incredibly useful tool for cutting through the chafe. So let’s take a look at why DekuDeals is so useful for game discovery on Switch.
New Deals Highlighted Every Week
The website highlights when games go on sale with their original price, sale price, sale percent, if it is the lowest price, and when the sale ends. In the above screenshot, you can see Little Nightmares Complete Edition is on sale for its lowest price ever – meaning this is the lowest price the game has been available on the Nintendo eShop.
BioShock: The Collection is on sale for a price that ‘matches previous low,’ which means the game has been on sale at this price before. It’s a handy way to see how often games go on sale and whether or not you should wishlist a game and maybe wait versus buying it outright.
See How Often Games Go on Sale
One of the best features of Deku Deals is it tracks the sale price of eShop games over time. That means you can better judge when you should buy a game. I’ll show you two examples that can help better inform your purchasing decisions on the eShop. Let’s say we’re interested in purchasing Skyrim on Switch. It’s an older third-party game that regularly goes on sale.
Based on the sale data from Deku Deals, it looks like Skyrim usually goes on sale in November & December for the holidays and April & June for spring and summer sales. Purchasing it digitally has historically been the lowest price, too.
Deku Deals can also help you identify ‘churn’ games that are taking advantage of the eShop with frequent sales. Nintendo hasn’t refined how often or how cheap games can be on the Nintendo eShop, so shovelware mobile titles will often go on sale for $.10 to $.99 in order to attract best-seller status on the eShop.
Here’s what the Deku Deals price chart looks like for a ‘churn’ game.
This game itself only costs $5 on the Nintendo eShop, but it goes on sale so frequently you should never pay full price for it. Nintendo likely clamped down on some of the extreme discounts in 2020 as this developer has maintained the same discount week after week. The all-time low for this game was less than fifty cents, but it’s never been that cheap ever again.
Smart Wishlisting With Price Thresholds
The Nintendo eShop has a wishlist feature, but it’s not very robust. You can ‘favorite’ games to be added to a list and receive a single email notification when games go on sale. There’s no control over price thresholds, so you’re constantly getting notifications when games on sale. Deku Deals handles this differently, allowing you to choose when to notify you of a sale.
Take a look at my wishlist to see how it works. As you can see, I got notified when XCOM 2 went on sale for $9.99, which is lower than my threshold of $25. If you don’t set a price threshold, Deku Deals will alert you of the deal no matter what – just like the Nintendo eShop.
You can also filter content you already own by adding it to the ‘My Collection’ list. There’s an option in the Deku Deals settings for collection items not to show up in the deals aggregation. This feature is useful if you own a lot of Switch games and only want to browse those you don’t already own.
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