The Nintendo Switch probably won’t receive a price cut anytime soon, but the latest bundle is close enough thanks to its inclusion of some eShop cash to jumpstart your digital collection of games.
Starting today at GameStop, Best Buy, and Amazon, you’ll be able to find the console for its regular $299.99 price, bundled with a free $35 eShop gift card. Previous bundles have come with first-party games, like Mario Kart 8: Deluxe or Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but this bundle lets you make the choice on what to buy.
Nintendo’s eShop offers digital games for those who don’t want to stockpile cases and cartridges. But several acclaimed titles for the Switch, like Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, and Into the Breach, are only available through the eShop, so make good use of the gift card that comes with the bundle. If you foresee playing online with friends in Fortnite, the new Tetris 99, or any other online multiplayer game, it might be wise to put the eShop credit toward a subscription to Nintendo Switch Online, which costs $20 per year. The service also comes with cloud save backups (something you’ll be glad to have if something goes wrong with your Switch) and a growing library of multiplayer-enabled NES classics.
It may be obvious to you, but it’s worth noting that anything that you download with your eShop credit will consume some of the Switch’s precious 32GB of internal storage. If you don’t want to delete something every time you buy a new game, consider investing in a big microSD card. For less than the price of a game or two, you can rest assured that your Switch will be able to store dozens of games and apps, if not more. Games can require as little as 100MB or as much as almost 30GB.
- SanDisk 128GB microSD card is $21.40 at Amazon
- SanDisk 200GB microSD card is $36.99 at B&H Photo
- SanDisk 256GB microSD card is $44.45 at Amazon
- SanDisk 400GB microSD card is $78.97 at Amazon