The Switch spent nine years missing one of the most basic features of any digital store: buying a game for someone else. Nintendo announced on November 9 that that’s finally changing. Starting next week, the eShop on Switch and Switch 2 will let you gift digital games, DLC, and upgrade packs. The fine print stings, though: you can only gift to someone in your family group. Not friends, not acquaintances, not that cousin in another house who isn’t in your group. And there’s a wrinkle with the date that Nintendo hasn’t fully cleared up.
Everything below comes from Nintendo’s official November 9 announcement and the 23.5.0 update notes, and where the two don’t agree, that’s flagged.
When it arrives: November 16 or 17, depending on who you ask
Here’s the first snag. Nintendo of America’s announcement says the feature comes to the Switch and Switch 2 eShop on November 16. The official notes for system update 23.5.0, on the other hand, say game gifting will be available after an eShop update scheduled for November 17. Both dates come from Nintendo, so this isn’t a rumor or a press error — it’s a mismatch between two official pages.
The most likely explanation is time zones — an update that lands on the 17th in Japan shows up on the evening of the 16th in the Americas — but Nintendo hasn’t confirmed that. In practice, expect the feature to appear sometime between Monday, November 16 and Tuesday, November 17, depending on where you live. What is clear is the prerequisite: your console needs system version 23.5.0 or later, the update Nintendo shipped on November 9 to lay the groundwork. If your console is online, it downloads on its own; if not, you can kick it off from System Settings.
And a warning so nobody gets burned: installing 23.5.0 doesn’t switch gifting on by itself. A separate eShop update still has to land. If you update on the 9th or 10th and go hunting for the gift checkbox, you won’t find it until that second piece arrives.
How gifting a game actually works
Nintendo didn’t build a new menu or a separate app for this. Gifting happens inside the same purchase you’ve always made. You open the eShop on your console, find the game you want to give, and on its product page you’ll see a new checkbox: “Give as a Gift.” Tick it and check out as usual.
Next you pick the recipient from a list of your family group members, and you can also choose which of their linked systems the gift should go to, in case they own more than one. Then come the presentation options — Nintendo lets you pick a gift wrap color — and you finish the payment like any other purchase.
The gift doesn’t wait around or get scheduled: it goes out the moment the purchase completes, so you can’t set one up a week before a birthday. The recipient gets it on their console’s HOME Menu, accepts it, and can start playing right away. No codes to copy, no extra steps.
The catch that changes everything: family group only
This is the part that’s going to frustrate people. A gift can only go to a member of your Nintendo Account family group, a group that holds up to eight accounts total and that anyone with a Nintendo Account can set up. There’s no way to gift to a friend on your list, no friend-code workaround, no email address. If they’re not in your group, there’s no gift.
For a lot of families, that’s no problem at all. The family group already exists for sharing a Nintendo Switch Online membership and for lending virtual game cards for up to two weeks. Gifting slots in as the missing piece. But if you wanted to surprise a friend with a game for Christmas, this feature doesn’t help, and the only option left is the same old one: an eShop gift card, so they can buy whatever they want themselves.
Worth sorting out before you move anyone around, too. Nintendo warns that repeatedly joining and leaving family groups can trigger restrictions, and switching groups affects benefits like the Switch Online family membership. This isn’t something to improvise: if you’re planning to gift games to someone this holiday season, the group needs to be set up well ahead of time.
What you can gift — and what’s left out
Nintendo says you’ll be able to gift eligible digital products bought through the eShop on your console: full games, downloadable content, and upgrade packs, like the ones that bring a Switch game up to its Switch 2 version. On paper, that’s a generous list.
But there’s an “eligible” doing a lot of heavy lifting. Nintendo warns that some products won’t be giftable, without saying yet which games are excluded or why. You’ll have to check game by game on the eShop itself once the feature is live. Nintendo also hasn’t said whether gifting works across regions, or whether gifts can be refunded.
The other exclusion is clear and leaves no room for doubt: supervised accounts — kids’ accounts managed by a parent or guardian — can’t send gifts. They can receive them, which is exactly the use case in Nintendo’s announcement: celebrating a special occasion with your kids. In practice, the gift flows one way inside the family: from adults to kids, or between adults.
The limits Nintendo still hasn’t explained
On top of the exclusions, Nintendo sets a cap that reads like contract fine print: the number of gift purchases allowed in a given period is limited. It doesn’t say how many gifts, over how long, or what happens if you hit the wall. It’s the kind of limit you only learn about by running into it — and the holiday shopping season is exactly when the most people will run into it.
There’s also no way to schedule delivery. On Steam you can buy a gift and have it land on someone’s birthday; on Nintendo’s eShop, the gift goes out instantly. That means buying the same day you want to hand it over, and not getting the date wrong: a gift bought on December 20 arrives on December 20, not the 25th.
These are details Nintendo ought to spell out before the shopping rush starts. For now, the safe move is not leaving the gift to the last day, and not assuming the feature behaves like Steam’s or Xbox’s. It’s the first version of something Nintendo spent years not doing, and it shows.
Nintendo is late — but right on time for Christmas
Let’s keep this in perspective: Steam has let you gift games since 2012, and Xbox since 2017, both to anyone on your friends list. Nintendo is showing up almost a decade after Xbox, with a more restrictive version. And even so, the arrival lands with a sting for someone else: it leaves the PlayStation 5 as the only console with no digital game gifting, a point Push Square put right in its headline on November 10. On the PlayStation Store, the only way to give someone a game is still to buy them a PSN voucher and let them buy it themselves.
The timing isn’t an accident. The feature switches on in mid-November, ten days before Black Friday on Friday, November 27, with the whole Christmas season ahead of it. That’s the time of year when the most games get given as gifts, and Nintendo knows it — its own announcement says the feature arrives “just in time for the holidays.” Anyone with a Switch 2 on their gift list can now pair the console with a digital game bought directly for the recipient, no gift card in between.
It’s also a sign of where Nintendo is headed. The company has spent years pushing digital: virtual game cards, upgrade packs, the eShop as the main store. Digital gifting was the most visible hole in that strategy, and closing it now, right before the biggest shopping season of the year, is the most obvious move Nintendo has made in a long time.
What to gift if you want to get it right
With the rules settled, the question is what to put in the box. The safest bet is a game the recipient already wants: the big Switch 2 titles are the obvious play, and a classic never misses. The Switch 2 edition of Zelda, with Ocarina of Time back for the series’ 40th anniversary, is exactly the kind of gift that needs no explanation — a game everyone recognizes, arriving in the middle of a celebration.
Another smart move is DLC for a game the recipient already owns. If you know someone has spent months on a particular game, its expansion is a gift that will actually get played, and it costs less than a full game. The same goes for upgrade packs: if someone owns the Switch version of a game and has already moved to Switch 2, the pack that upgrades it is a cheap, thoughtful touch.
And one practical tip so you don’t spoil the surprise: since the gift lands on the recipient’s HOME Menu the instant you buy it, don’t buy it in front of them or with their console nearby. Buy it the same day you want to give it, with their console off or out of reach, and let the gift show up when it’s supposed to. The surprise, in this case, comes down to your timing.
Frequently asked questions
When can I start gifting digital games on Switch?
Between November 16 and 17, 2026, depending on which official Nintendo source you go by: Nintendo of America’s announcement says November 16, and the 23.5.0 update notes put the eShop update on November 17. You’ll need system version 23.5.0 or later.
Can I gift a game to a friend?
No. Only to members of your Nintendo Account family group, which holds up to eight accounts. Friends who aren’t in your group can’t receive digital gifts.
What can be gifted?
Eligible digital games, DLC, and upgrade packs bought in the eShop. Some products won’t be eligible, and Nintendo hasn’t published the list. Supervised accounts can’t send gifts, but they can receive them.
Does the gift arrive right away?
Yes. It goes out as soon as the purchase completes and shows up on the recipient’s HOME Menu, where they accept it and can play immediately. You can’t schedule it for a later date.
Does the PS5 have digital game gifting too?
No. With this feature coming to Switch, the PS5 is left as the only console with no direct digital game gifting: on the PlayStation Store you can only send wallet vouchers. Steam and Xbox let you gift to anyone on your friends list.
