Bad news, future Switch owners. In an email sent out on Thursday morning, Nintendo revealed that the Virtual Console will not be available when the Switch launches next week. Considering that we hadn’t heard or seen anything about the feature being ready for launch up until now, this isn’t all that shocking, but it’s disappointing for fans who were hoping to play classic Nintendo games on the Switch on day one.
Nintendo didn’t explain why Virtual Console games would not be available at launch, but did say that it would “share more information in the future.” In other words, while the Virtual Console will almost certainly migrate to the Switch at some point, you probably shouldn’t hold your breath. Nintendo’s priority is getting the hardware out the door, and then dealing with software and functionality down the road.
In the same email, Nintendo highlighted 2 of the 60 indie games that will come to the Switch in 2017: a racing game called FAST RMX and a port of the beloved platformer Shovel Knight. As we discussed in a previous article, the Switch launch lineup is lacking, but it would be nearly barren if not for the indies.
Nintendo also announced that “people who already have funds in their accounts on other Nintendo devices can access them using a shared wallet that works on Nintendo Switch as well.” So if you have some money on your 3DS that you haven’t spent, you can use it to pick up a game on the Switch eShop instead.
Finally, as you know if you’ve read our pre-launch preview, there will be a day one update for the Switch that will activate the eShop. Nintendo says the update will install quickly in the background.
