 Hey everyone and welcome back to Nintendo Prime. We have an interesting video for you today because the Nintendo Switch eShop has been an amazing place to find a lot of really, really great games, right? We've had a lot of amazing indie games come out, Shadow Drops, in fact. It's possible with Gamescom this week. There could be some more Shadow Drops coming. How about Ninja Turtles? You know, members of Shredder's Revenge. We saw that at a Nintendo Direct earlier this year. We didn't see it at the last one or the indie world. Yeah, that's kind of an interesting one that's going to be at Gamescom. It's being advertised for Gamescom. Maybe there's a Shadow Drop this week and that would be a really cool addition on Switch eShop. In fact, we just had a Shadow Drop quite recently on Switch eShop. But here's the thing. The Switch eShop isn't perfect, right? We've all been criticizing it seemingly forever. It doesn't organize things very well. It doesn't lead to organic discovery. And I've talked several times in the past I think Nintendo needs to be looking at competitors such as Netflix and see how they organize things. You have your recent stuff and then you have categories by genre and then you obviously have suggested content. And that suggested content is based on content you have currently played or previously played on your system, whether physical or digital. And then in addition to that, they also have a featured section. And that featured section would obviously be the games that they are advertising at that moment, whether it's their own games or third party games or indie games. So it's a great way for discovery. Netflix is really good at helping people discover new content on the platform. And Nintendo's eShop is like the opposite of that. In fact, one of the best ways to discover content was previously using go into the sales section and seeing what games are on sale. The problem is at any time now there's 3,000, 4,000 games on sale. All of them competing for different prices to appear differently in the list. And it still gets really, really difficult to find games. Pretty much if you're not a featured game by Nintendo, you are not going to be easy to find on the eShop without the number of games that come out every day. Even if you're a new release, you could be buried tomorrow. So it's been a fundamental issue for quite some time, but the eShop needs some work. And I'm not saying that necessarily Microsoft or the Xbox or Sony with their store, the PlayStation Store has been significantly better, but they are a little bit better in the discovery department. I do think all the shops could actually use a little bit of work and take a lot of cues from things like Netflix and even Hulu and some of these other TV, movie applications out there, even Disney Plus where they could really take some notes from how they organize things to help consumers discover new content. That being said, that's less the issue today. Today is actually a major problem with Switch, which is probably more prevalent than we realize, but there is something happening on the Nintendo Switch eShop right now that is a massive problem. And honestly, it's on Nintendo for allowing it to happen. Now, before we get into that, I'm going to remind you we are giving away eSwitch OLED. That's right, the brand new system that comes out on October 8th. We're giving away one of the white versions to one lucky subscriber out there. That's right, all you need to do is be subscribed to the channel to enter, and we will announce the winner in a live stream in early October. All right, so I'm getting all this from a Reddit thread and I have independently verified it. Got my Switch right here, logged in, checked it all out. It seems to be legit as hell. I didn't bother to buy both of these games to confirm, but it does look like I don't want to, basically I don't want to support what is happening here. And I want to point this out just to bring more attention to it. So Nintendo, please watch this video or watch other videos that might cover this and do something about not just this situation, but what is likely hundreds of these situations on the eShop. So this was all pointed out by a user over on the Nintendo Switch Reddit called Caspian X2. So I'm going to read his thread and I'm going to put actual gameplay of what he's talking about on screen right now. So Metal Commando, a game being released on the eShop twice under two different names by two different publishers just one week apart from each other. This is really, really strange to me. Let me explain what I've been able to find out and you can judge for yourself what's going on. Just a few days ago, publisher Ultimate Games released a game on the eShop called Metal Commando. For what I can tell, the game was developed by a company called NZT Studio. Note the NZT Corporation signs in the background and I'm guessing it was shopped around to dev4play.com to be published. You can see their logo at the end of the Nintendo Switch trailer here. Dev4Play's business model seems to be acting as the middleman between Development Studios and Ultimate Games. Their website proudly states we will publish your game but all of their games are listed as being published on the Nintendo Switch seem to only list Ultimate Games as the publisher. Okay, so Ultimate Games published a Switch port of a mobile game, big deal, right? Here is the thing, later this week, the Nintendo Switch will be receiving a new release by the name Titans Black Ops. Take a look at the screenshots. Looks familiar, don't it? Yeah, there are even the NZT Corporation signs in the background. This time the game was being published by Benjamin Kistler, aka Kistler Benjamin. A look at his catalog of games on the Nintendo Switch makes it clear that this guy brings over a lot of asset flips. Two thirds of the stuff on that page can be found on the Unity Asset Store. Ultimate Games, meanwhile, seems to mostly publish games by various other developers and if they put out any asset flips, I haven't been able to find them. Now, this wouldn't be the first time the Switch has played host to an asset flip. Just a few days ago, I posted about the infamous Hammer 2 asset flip, which is about to get released on the Nintendo Switch for the third time. However, I've been looking high and low to see if Metal Commando is on asset stores and I haven't been able to find it. I absolutely do see it on Google Play in many, many places. Usually, it's simply listed as Metal Commando. You can see it in all these other places that he links and I'll put a link to this thread down in the description so you guys can go check that out yourself. It says, interestingly, the signs in that last one read MTB Corporation, just to point out that a few came up in a quick search. So clearly, this is a game that's getting around, but is it an asset flip or perhaps a case of a developer handing out the game to publishers like Candy for some reason? In any case, it seemed really crazy that the same game would be released twice under two names by two different publishers, only a week apart from each other. And I thought you guys might be interested to hear about it. And obviously he mentioned Hammer 2 as an example getting released three times on the Nintendo Switch eShop. And there's some people out there that are a little bit upset that it's kind of like a Metal Slug ripoff. And I will say this, I don't really care so much that the game is inspired by or based on or heavily influenced by something like Metal Slug. It's still its own art style, it's still its own gameplay. So that doesn't really bother me so much. There's gonna be lots of games like any game that becomes popular. Remember when Flappy Bird was a big thing of phones? Look how many of the clones we got out there. I don't have a problem with any of the clones. That's just taking advantage of a popular thing in the marketplace. But here's the thing. Obviously the Switch eShop has a problem. It has a problem with the game discovery. And I feel like the issue with game discovery is what's leading to this. A game being published by multiple studios under different names. A game appearing several times and several different iterations of it necessarily on things like the Android Store. I feel like the Switch's biggest problem with something like this is twofold. One, obviously they have a problem with game discovery leading to the encouragement of publishing a game like Hammer 2 three times. And then obviously an issue where they're not paying attention to what's being put on their shop. Now Nintendo, for those who don't know, you can't just willy-nilly toss a game on the Nintendo Switch eShop. You can't just wake up one day, have a game, have a Switch dev kit and decide, I'm gonna throw this out on the eShop. Nintendo has to approve every single game released on the eShop. That doesn't necessarily mean they have to play the games. I'm not saying there's someone at Nintendo America, at Nintendo of Japan, just sitting there playing every single game submitted to them. That is not necessarily the case, although you can argue maybe they should be and that would help curate the experience. But what happens is that the games have to go to Nintendo for approval for publication on their platform. And what's happening is they're not paying any attention to what's being published on the Switch eShop at all. To be clear, I don't care this is a mobile game from your phone put on Switch, that's not my gripe. I have no problem with phone games being on Switch. There are actually some really good phone games and heck, this might be one of them. I don't know, I haven't played it. It looks fine, for at least from the video I'm showing you. So again, the Switch eShop has two major problems here. One is obviously a curation problem and the other is obviously they are not quality controlling this eShop at all. And I think we've known that for a while, but it's sad when we see example after example of this happen. I said these are two examples of Hammer 2 and obviously Metal Slug or whatever, not Metal Slug, but it's Metal Commando. But it's frustrating and I gotta admit, I tend to be using the eShop less and less as the years go unless there's a very specific thing I'm looking for, like yesterday I downloaded a Warriorware demo during Andres Research podcast that I was on last night because I was reminded of the demo, I totally forgot about it. So I went on the eShop and I looked it up. It wasn't like it was easy to find. I just knew what I wanted, went to the eShop, typed it in the search and downloaded the demo. And that's pretty much the only way I use the eShop these days. I don't navigate the menus anymore. I don't bother to try to discover new games that maybe I might be interested in that I didn't think about. And I had thought about actually even making a video series where I go through and I buy like five games off the eShop that the eShop suggests to me to purchase. I don't know how they really suggest since it doesn't, maybe that they feature. Maybe it's the five cheapest games and you know, or the five biggest sales on the eShop. I don't know, like I'm thinking of like a series where maybe I explore the eShop a little bit more just to see how bad it really is. And that's something that maybe will start to happen as we get further into the year here. But honestly, this is a shameful thing from you Nintendo, tut, tut, tut Nintendo. I'm gonna be a teacher. I'm gonna scold you. This is wrong. You get an F for this situation. This is on you. Yes, companies that are trying to take advantage of it or trying to have multiple publishers and release things under different names. Yes, we could talk about those shameful practices but why do those practices exist? Game can't be discovered on your eShop. That's number one. And number two, you allow it to happen. If you didn't allow it to happen, it wouldn't happen in the first place. Nintendo, this is on you. Your quality control for the eShop is trash. Your development on the eShop, am I gonna say it's trash? It's functional. It's just not as good as it should be for a digital shop in 2021. When I could tell you the Microsoft Store, Windows PC does a better job and that's a trash store in comparison to pretty much every other shop. You can get on a PC but the Microsoft Store that's baked in the Windows 10 is garbage and that garbage is still leagues ahead of the way the eShop is organized. And there are a lot better at curating things although there's some exceptions out there. You for a while you could buy like a copy of Mario literally off the eShop or off the Microsoft Store. So they have their own issues too. So they're not perfect but at least they're organized. You're not even that. So Nintendo, you need to step up. People always say I'm not critical of Nintendo enough. Well let me tell you, I'm critical of Nintendo when they deserve it. They deserve criticism. They deserve all the criticism for that eShop. This is a device that has a brand new version with an OLED screen with pretty much no bezels coming out here in October and the eShop is not gonna get any better. The kickstand will be better. The screen experience will be better. It'll be brighter, it'll be more vivid. It's gonna be deeper blacks. It's gonna be a much better gaming experience but the way you get digital content isn't improving. This is beyond the fact there's no themes and other stuff that you can make easy money on this platform and let people customize it a bit. Forget that. I'm not even upset about that. But the eShop, a way we purchase video games is broken. And I don't know, I can't really make an excuse for that Nintendo. It's been almost five years. Get your shit together. I am Nintendo Robot Dance from Nintendo Prime. Thank you so much for tuning in. Hopefully you enjoyed this video. Drop a like, leave a comment, help us out with that YouTube algorithm. Be sure to subscribe to the channel so you're entered to win a Switch OLED. And be subscribed anyways because you wanna catch more of my content. Hit that bell icon if you would like to as well. For future live streams, we do have a podcast coming this Wednesday. So hopefully you tune in for that. We have a lot of great stuff to talk about. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I am Nintendo Robot Dance from Nintendo Prime and I'll catch each and every single one of you in the next video.