PlatinumGames producer Hideki Kamiya called out the Nintendo Switch home menu on Twitter earlier this week, citing poor design while pulling no punches about how he feels about it as an overall presentation. Kamiya is known for his work on Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, and Viewtiful Joe among other successful titles, and he’s long held a reputation as someone who is unabashedly honest in his dealings with consumers and fellow industry members, often to the point of being brash or insulting.
The Nintendo Switch is on track early in its life cycle to be one of the most successful Nintendo devices of all time, eclipsing sales trajectories while supplying its users with a steady stream of first-party game of the year contenders like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Despite the console’s overall reputation as a desirable product, however, it has been hampered by issues that have become expected from Nintendo offerings: poor online play and infrastructure, for instance, has hamstrung Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s multiplayer modes, while Joy-Con drift remains a problem despite being reported during the console’s first few months available on the market.
However, Hideki Kamiya has an issue with a much more basic element of the Nintendo Switch UI: it’s home screen, in particular the way its accessibility is designed. Kamiya’s issues seem to stem from the fact that the home menu does a poor job balancing how it presents its games, organizing too many of them into an “All Games” section that makes accessing the desired title an annoyance. Kamiya took to Twitter to express how much he disliked the system, and in classic Kamiya style, he held nothing back (translation provided by NintendoSoup):
Apparently, Japanese Twitter users are agreeing with Kamiya too, suggesting that the Nintendo Switch should improve its home menu so that those who have extensive game libraries can access the titles they want to play easier. For those unfamiliar, the current structure of the Nintendo Switch home menu makes it so that if a user has more than 12 games on their system at any time, the 13th game and further are all hidden in the “All Games” section.
“The Nintendo Switch’s Home Menu is a piece of crap, all of the shitty gigantic game icons are lined up in a row, but the rest of the games are tossed into a trash can called ‘All Games’…I wonder have they (the people that made the menu) ever played the Nintendo fan boys’ Switch?”
A lot of the Nintendo Switch’s bigger problems are fixable, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. While Nintendo has worked to make its online offering a bit better with the Switch, the Joy-Con drift issue remains persistent and largely unaddressed. The company seems perfectly content with leaving some of the issues so long as it’s not impacting the Switch’s bottom line and, given that console’s reception and the excellent Nintendo Switch Lite providing an alternative for interested consumers, it doesn’t seem like Nintendo is going to be incentivized to make any drastic changes to its home menu any time soon. Perhaps someone like Kamiya, however, who holds some weight in the industry and has a lot of passionate followers, can get the ball rolling after all.
Next: What Could Nintendo Have Up Its Sleeve in 2020?
Source: Hideki Kamiya/Twitter (via NintendoSoup)
