Nintendo now has a Store App on Android and iOS

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Nintendo just dropped yet another app onto our already app-cluttered phones, this time, a shiny new Nintendo Store app for Android and iOS, where you can buy Switch hardware, accessories, and games for both the Switch and the Switch 2. 

That brings the grand total of official Nintendo apps to four (or five if you’re a parent tracking your kid’s Minecraft hours), meaning Nintendo now takes up an entire row in your app drawer like an overenthusiastic houseguest who brought luggage for a weekend stay and a moving truck.

To be fair, Nintendo has always done things its own way. Sometimes that means genius ideas like the Wii, and sometimes it means not including built-in voice chat until 2024. 

While Microsoft and Sony were busy merging features into sleek all-in-one apps, Nintendo said, “What if we made every feature its own biome?” 

The result: one app for screenshots and social stuff, one for news, one for music (because Nintendo refuses to put its bops on Spotify), and now one just for buying things you will definitely regret at 2 AM.

Each app has a purpose. The Switch app handles captures, the store app sells stuff, and Nintendo Today gives news alerts faster than Nintendo’s own website. 

The music app is basically a legal way to avoid YouTube playlists titled “REAL MARIO GALAXY OST (NO COPYRIGHT???)”. 

But the overlap is wild: play activity shows up in two apps, both store and news apps have news feeds, and everything feels like it could be one mega-app that simply isn’t.

Meanwhile, PlayStation and Xbox users get one unified app where you can buy games, check trophies, and pull up screenshots without feeling like you’re switching between alternate timelines. 

Nintendo? It’s like being handed four remotes that all control the same TV, but in different ways, and one of them plays music for some reason.

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa says the goal is for Nintendo to be part of “everyday life.” Mission accomplished, but maybe too literally. 

If the company keeps launching apps at this rate, players won’t run out of storage on their Switch. They’ll run out on their phones first.