Nintendo’s current console has more games on it than the PlayStation 4 and 5 put together, but also the best record of quality on Metacritic.
In the modern era of gaming. you can usually guarantee two things about a Nintendo console: that it will feature a number of highly acclaimed first party exclusive games, and that it probably won’t have many top titles made by third party publishers. After all, no one expects the latest Grand Theft Auto or Call Of Duty on a Nintendo console (not that both haven’t happened occasionally).
People happily buy the Nintendo Switch knowing that many games available on the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 4 will never appear on it, but that doesn’t mean that, overall, the Switch has less games. In fact, surprisingly, the opposite is true.
A fan has added up all the games available on Switch and discovered it has an incredible 11,555 games. That’s more than any other previous console, including the PlayStation 4 and 5 combined, the PlayStation 1 through 3, and all Xbox consoles including backwards compatibility.
If you’re wondering how that can be, it’s because the Switch has become a haven for indie games – many of which sell better or are only released on Nintendo’s console (and usually PC).
It’s also due to a lot of what can only be described as shovelware: low quality games thrown onto the eShop with little care on the side of the creators and with no attempts at curation from Nintendo.
The Last Of Us knock-off that Sony insisted be removed from the eShop is one of the few famous examples, with most of the others being sub-mobile style rubbish no one’s ever heard of.
The original observation was made on the forum ResetEra, using data from Mobygames and DekuDeals, which highlighted some small inconsistences between the two sources.
Forum member St. Eam the 3rd found that while Windows PC has by far the largest library, at 66,569 games, that’s because its backwards compatibility stretches all the way back to 1993.
The Switch’s total though is comparable to both iOS and Android’s games libraries – which are also filled with mountains of anonymous shovelware – and well ahead of its nearest console rival, the PlayStation 4, at 10,870 games.
Even when you take backwards compatibility into consideration the Nintendo Switch beats all comers, which is ironic because it isn’t backwards compatible itself, since its predecessor was the disc-based Wii U.
With the PlayStation 5’s catalogue added to the mix the total for Sony’s most recent consoles still only comes to 11,463, compared to 11,555 for the Switch. Interestingly, 8-bit computer the Commodore 64 has the seventh biggest library, behind the various modern PlayStation and Xbox consoles.
However, that does not mean that the Nintendo Switch has achieved its total at the expense of quality. The Switch also has the greatest number of games receiving a 90+ Metacritic score, the greatest number of 75+ games, and the second greatest number of 60+ games.
Once again, it’s the PlayStation 4 which is closest behind, although obviously that’s been around longer than the Switch, and the PlayStation 5 is newer than both.
It’s a fascinating collection of stats and while you could argue that ultimately it doesn’t matter, given the small number of games most people end up owning for their format of choice, the Metacritic results alone are very impressive.
What’s definitely interesting is that, unlike the current Switch, the Switch 2 is heavily rumoured to be backwards compatible, which could mean the majority of current Switch games will be available on the new format from day one – which will certainly be a sizeable head start for the console.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
Sign up to all the exclusive gaming content, latest releases before they're seen on the site.
Privacy Policy »Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
