Can you gift a Switch game from the eShop this Christmas? From November 17, yes - but only to your family group

Every December I do the same slightly silly dance. My nephew wants a game, I want it to be a surprise, and I end up buying a prepaid card or a download code and typing sixteen characters into his console while he's told to look at the ceiling. So when I read that Nintendo is finally adding proper gifting to the eShop, I honestly did a little cheer at my desk.

Then I read the small print. It's good news, just narrower than the headline sounds.

What's actually changing, and when

Nintendo has released system update Ver. 23.5.0 for both the Nintendo Switch and the Switch 2. According to the patch notes, it adds support for gifting Nintendo eShop products to other people.

Two things to know before you go looking for the button:

It isn't live yet. The console update is only the first half. Nintendo says the feature becomes available after a Nintendo eShop update scheduled for November 17. If you install 23.5.0 today and can't find a gift option anywhere, nothing is broken - you're just early.

It only works inside your Nintendo Account family group. You can gift to members of your own family group, which holds up to eight accounts in total. You can't send a game to someone on your friends list the way you can on Steam.

What to do before the 17th

If the person you want to surprise is your kid, your partner or anyone else already in your family group, you're basically set: update the console to 23.5.0 and wait for the eShop update.

If they aren't in your group yet, that's the bit worth sorting out now and not on Christmas Eve. Family groups are managed in your Nintendo Account settings, and it's the same group you may already use for a Nintendo Switch Online family membership. One gentle warning from me: a family group is meant for people you genuinely share a household-style setup with, so I wouldn't start adding half your friends list just to send somebody a present.

For everyone outside the group - the friend in another city, the cousin with their own setup - nothing changes. A prepaid eShop card or a download code is still the way to go.

What we don't know yet

The patch notes talk about eShop "products", and I haven't seen Nintendo spell out exactly what that covers or how the gift shows up on the other person's console. I'd wait until the 17th to see it in action before planning a big reveal around it.

Is it a small step? Yes. Friends-list gifting is the feature people have been asking for since the first Switch, and this isn't that. But I keep thinking about who it's built for: parents, grandparents, aunts like me, buying a game for a kid on the family console. For that crowd it removes a genuinely fiddly step, and it lands right before the one month of the year when it matters most. I'll take it, and I'll keep asking nicely for the rest.

Image: Crisco 1492 / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nintendo_Switch_2_in_Docking_Console.jpg