Nintendo now lets you gift games on Switch and Switch 2, but only to your family group

Nintendo has decided to put on its holiday hat early. According to a report published by IGN España, the company has released an update for Switch and Switch 2 that finally adds an option many players had been waiting on for a long time: gifting Nintendo eShop products to someone else directly from the console. The feature arrives with system version 23.5.0 and lands just as the season of wishlists and end-of-year shopping begins.

The news matters because digital gifting is a basic part of any modern ecosystem, and it was still missing from Nintendo's store. The problem is that it comes with fine print: you can only gift to people who are part of your Nintendo Account family group. In other words, the feature exists, but with a much shorter reach than its name promises.

What you need to know

• What's new: the ability to gift Nintendo eShop products.
• Where: on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, through a system update.
• Version: 23.5.0.
• The catch: gifts can only be sent to members of your Nintendo Account family group.
• The timing: the feature debuts ahead of the holiday season.

What changes and who it affects

On paper, the change is simple: instead of buying something just for yourself, you can now buy it for someone else. For a household with several consoles, it's a clear improvement. Parents, siblings or partners who already share a family group have a direct way to give a gift without going through a physical store.

The limit lies in the word family. According to IGN España's report, the option is restricted to the members of that group, which means the friend you play with every night, your teammate or that follower you wanted to reward are all left out of the equation. The biggest winner is the family that shares a home; the biggest loser is the player whose social life on the console happens mostly online.

What the source doesn't make clear

The information available is brief and leaves open questions. There are no details on exactly which types of product are covered by the feature, what the step-by-step process looks like, or whether Nintendo plans to widen its scope later on. We're not going to fill those gaps with guesswork either: for now, what's confirmed is the version, the consoles and the family group restriction. If you're interested in using it this holiday season, the safest move is to check the conditions on your own console before counting on it.

Our take

At Underworld Lordz we see it as a step in the right direction, but one taken with the handbrake on. Gifting digital games is something that on other platforms, especially on PC, has been part of everyday life for many years. Nintendo adding it is good news; doing it only for the family circle is stopping halfway. We can imagine the reasons, such as keeping control over purchases or preventing abuse, but that's our own interpretation, not something the company has explained in the information we have.

For the competitive scene and for content creators, the limitation weighs even more heavily. A direct digital gift would be the perfect tool for live giveaways, prizes in community tournaments or that captain who wants the whole team to have the same game to practice with. None of that is possible if the recipient has to be inside your family group. And a word of warning from our newsroom: we don't recommend adding strangers to that group just so you can gift them something. It's designed for people close to you, and forcing it can bring you more trouble than joy.

Even so, we'd rather have a limited feature than none at all. The hard part is usually opening the door, and now it's ajar. If Nintendo wants its digital store to live up to the community it has, the logical next move would be to extend gifting to the friends list. Until then, it's a nice touch for the home and a missed opportunity for everything else.

What do you think?

We want to hear from you in the team chat and on our Discord: is being able to gift games only to your family group enough for you, or do you think Nintendo should open the feature up to your friends and your community as soon as possible?