A few minutes ago, Nintendo announced that Miitomo, Nintendo Accounts, and My Nintendo would all launch on March 31st in Europe and North America. Of course, the web eShop will also go live at the same time, and will be available via Nintendo.com (North America) and Nintendo of Europe’s website.

And in Europe, Nintendo’s website has been readied for the web eShop. It all started in October, when the website got a redesign. The main goal of that redesign was to make the website more modern, with a responsive design (that automatically adapts itself to the size of your screen, which is pretty important for users using a smartphone or tablet). Other than the front page, the new design didn’t look all that different from the previous one (and kept the same structure).

And in the past few weeks, Nintendo regularly updated various parts of the website. The changes were relatively small, and not really newsworthy (which is why we didn’t make a post for them). But now that the web eShop has been announced, it’s time to take a closer look at the most noticeable changes.

Now, the gamepages display more data, as you can see on the screencaps below:

Now, the gamepage displays the download size of games (data which is directly taken from the Nintendo eShop), which is pretty important for those planning to make use of the web eShop. Also, Nintendo clarified the icons for compatible controllers, which is a change that came a couple of weeks ago.

For example: before, the Wii Classic Controller icon only showed the controller itself, with the Wii Remote displayed separately. With that “system”, it wasn’t clear if the game in question was compatible with just the Classic Controller (which requires a Wii Remote), or with both the Classic Controller AND the Wii Remote.

Interesting detail: the page specifies that games are for the European version of the Wii U / Nintendo 3DS. It’s most likely because a Nintendo Account is global, and can even be used to log in on the website of another region than yours.

Finally, the most important change can only be seen by looking at the source code. Now, each gamepage features a lot of lines related to the web eShop, as you can see on the screencaps below:

This confirms that each gamepage on Nintendo’s website will basically be a Nintendo eShop page (just like in Japan). The price of games will be displayed in real time on the website, which includes times when promotions and discounts are ongoing.

Since Nintendo already posts a page for each game on its website, with details, screens, and trailers, it does make sense that they would use those for the web eShop (instead of making a new website from scratch). Unfortunately, it’s not the case in Australia, which is probably why the Australian PR did not mention the web eShop. It’s not clear when the web eShop will be launched in Australia at the moment.

In the source code, there’s also URL for several Support pages, which are not live yet:

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Support/Website-and-Club-Nintendo/Purchasing/Pre-purchase/Purchasing-download-games-on-the-official-Nintendo-website-before-they-are-released-1094141.html https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Support/Website-and-Club-Nintendo/Purchasing/Nintendo-eShop/Buying-directly-from-Nintendo-eShop-on-the-official-Nintendo-website-1094133.html https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Support/Website-and-Club-Nintendo/Purchasing/Contact/Contacting-Nintendo-about-the-purchasing-download-games-on-the-official-Nintendo-website-1094119.html https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Support/Website-and-Club-Nintendo/Purchasing/Redownloading/Redownloading-previously-purchased-games-1094143.html https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Support/Website-and-Club-Nintendo/Purchasing/Nintendo-Account/Using-a-Nintendo-Account-to-purchase-download-games-on-the-official-Nintendo-website-1094131.html https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Support/Website-and-Club-Nintendo/Purchasing/Nintendo-Network-ID/Using-the-Nintendo-Network-ID-to-purchase-download-games-on-the-official-Nintendo-website-1094135.html

Pretty interesting that Nintendo did not rename the “Website and Club Nintendo” section of the website!

The source code also mentions the Nintendo Accounts discount (Just for You), and various other details such as pre-purchases, promotions/discounts currently available, My Nintendo and more. You can check it out for yourself on pretty much any gamepage on Nintendo of Europe’s website (and its regional variants), such as the one for Flipnote Studio 3D (coming out this Thursday in Europe).

The web eShop goes live on Thursday in the early afternoon, and that’s most likely when “Purchase” links will be added to gamepages (and that the Support URL above will go live).