A personalised rating system may be coming to the Switch eShop, along with tailored game recommendations

It seems that Nintendo may be doing something about the Switch’s eShop discoverability issues, with signs that a more personalised eShop might be on the way.

As reported by Game Rant, a new patent from Nintendo points to the eShop introducing a personalised rating system, which if implemented would provide game recommendations that it thinks the user might like. This system would allow the eShop to organise itself on a per-player basis, helping combat the discoverability issues developers and publishers have complained about in the past.

The system would pull from a variety of sources, including critic and user reviews, as well as the player’s own preference for game genres. Using this data, the system would create a personalised section for the user to browse, similar to the Recommended section of the Xbox Store.

Of course, just because Nintendo has a patent doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to introduce this feature. Though given the discoverability issues on the Switch eShop, it would be silly not to. Discoverability on the platform is notoriously poor, as we explored last year. The constant onslaught of new releases on the eShop results in developers seeing their games be quickly buried, which many choosing to introduce rock-bottom sales in order to appear at the top of the best selling tab.

“The eShop has proven the hardest store for us,” No More Robot’s Mike Rose told MCV/DEVELOP at the time. “On Steam, you get tons of automatic promotion guaranteed, and there are plenty of ways to utilize the Steam store. On Xbox and PlayStation, it’s all about getting the store placement, getting Xbox Wire and PlayStation Blog posts etc. On Switch, for the vast majority of devs, it’s solely on you getting the word out before launch, and then knowing all the intricacies of how the store works.”