Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Crunchyroll is finally coming to Nintendo Switch

Emily Morrow
By

Anime streaming service Crunchyroll is now available on the Nintendo Switch.

Crunchyroll announced this morning that its new app, downloadable on the Switch, will give viewers full access to tens of thousands of anime episodes. The Crunchyroll app has been available for a long time on competing consoles, smart TVs, and other streaming-capable devices. The Switch is notorious for its lack of streaming apps and non-gaming entertainment options compared to Microsoft and Sony’s consoles.

Related Videos
Crunchyroll Now on Nintendo Switch!

Crunchyroll’s Unreal Engine-powered app joins fellow anime streaming service Funimation, which has been available on the Switch since late 2020. Crunchyroll aims to differentiate itself by becoming the first streaming app to offer offline viewing on the Switch. Though the company does offer a subscription service that removes ads and allows viewers to watch episodes as they premiere in Japan, those without a subscription can still watch episodes with ads.

Related

Even with the addition of Crunchyroll, the Switch’s variety of streaming and entertainment apps doesn’t hold a candle to that of Xbox and PlayStation. Prior to Crunchyroll’s release, Switch players could choose from a paltry five video streaming services: Funimation, Hulu, Twitch, YouTube, and Pokémon TV, which streams episodes of the Pokémon anime. Those who use a Switch as their primary entertainment device can’t access Netflix, YouTube TV, Peacock, HBO, or many other major streaming services.

While the inclusion of Crunchyroll brings some hope for the future of non-gaming entertainment on the Switch, Nintendo has historically focused on games over all else, so don’t expect the console to suddenly become a go-to streaming platform. Unless they’re an anime die-hard, most Switch owners are better off using a different console or a device like a Roku or Chromecast to enjoy movies and TV.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
The best multiplayer games on Nintendo Switch
Mario and his friends.

Part of the Nintendo Switch's appeal is its versatility -- you can play it at home on your TV or on the go in portable mode. This versatility also applies to multiplayer and co-op games, which can be played with single Joy-Con controllers, in tabletop mode, and wirelessly both online and locally. Better yet, many of these Nintendo Switch games allow for crossplay with other consoles and PCs.

And while the Switch might not be the competitive powerhouse that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are, it still offers an incredible library of multiplayer games. In fact, the portable console is home to some of the best co-op experiences we've seen in this generation, and new competitive games are being added all the time. Here are our favorites, whether you're a fan of raucous racing games, mellow simulators, or monster-hunting titles of the finest caliber.
The best multiplayer games on Nintendo Switch

Read more
Nintendo Switch Game Vouchers: how they work and eligible games
A pair of nintendo switch game couvhers.

After disappearing from the store in 2019, Nintendo Switch Game Vouchers have returned to the eShop. These vouchers are a great value to those who are active Switch users and purchase a lot of their games digitally via the Nintendo online shop. By purchasing a voucher, players are able to browse a constantly expanding selection of Switch games, including many high-profile first-party titles such as Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, Splatoon 3, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and use their vouchers to purchase games. In addition, they can also be used to preorder upcoming titles.

If you neverhad the chance to use them before, here's everything you need to know about Nintendo Switch Game Vouchers.
How Nintendo Switch Vouchers work

Read more
Don’t expect Zelda’s $70 price to become the new Switch standard, says Nintendo
Link looks at his hand in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be Nintendo's first Switch game to be priced at $70. News that Tears of the Kingdom, a sequel to one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed titles on the system, will have an increased price compared to its predecessor came as a surprise over three-and-a-half years after its announcement. It also raised questions about what the future of pricing for Nintendo games will be, especially as Sony, Microsoft, and third-party publishers all upped the cost of their new games in recent years. 
While Nintendo will release Tears of Kingdom at $70, a spokesperson for the company tells Digital Trends that this will not always be the case for its first-party games going forward. 
"No," the spokesperson said when Digital Trends asked if this is a new standard. "We determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." 
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Official Trailer #2
To get more insight into the price shift, I spoke to Omdia Principal Analyst George Jijiashvili, who explains what has caused the price of games to go up in recent years and how Tears of the Kingdom demonstrates that Nintendo will "remain flexible about first-party title pricing." Ultimately, Nintendo fans are finally starting to feel the impact of inflation that's been sweeping across the game industry, even if it's only "on a case-by-case basis" for now.
The price is right
Nintendo claims that not every one of its significant first-party game will be $70, and we can actually already see that in action. Preorders just went live for Pikmin 4, which launches on July 21, after Tears of the Kingdom, and it only costs $60. Still, Zelda's price tag indicates that going forward, Nintendo will at least consider raising the price of its most anticipated games to $70. But why start with Tears of the Kingdom?  
When asked why it chose Tears of the Kingdom as its first $70 Nintendo Switch game, a Nintendo spokesperson simply reiterated that the company will "determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." Still, it's a surprising choice for Nintendo to make that pricing change to just one exclusive game almost six years into the Switch's life span. Jijiashvili thinks the choice to do this with Tears of the Kingdom was a pretty apparent one for Nintendo, although it won't apply to everything going forward.
"If you are going to make a game $70, it's going to be the follow-up to one of your most critically acclaimed and bestselling games ever," Jijiashvili tells Digital Trends. "I don’t think that this means that $70 will become the standard price for all major Nintendo releases. It's worth noting that Metroid Prime Remastered is priced at $40. It's clear that Nintendo will remain flexible about first-party title pricing."

It makes basic financial sense for Nintendo to ask for a little bit more for a game it knows will be one of the biggest releases of 2023. But what factors in the game industry and world's economy at large caused Nintendo to make this decision? 
Priced Out
For more than a decade, people got comfortable with AAA video games being priced at $60. Of course, there were occasional exceptions to this rule, but it was seen as an industry standard until the dawn of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Publisher 2K was one of the first to announce a price increase, and companies like EA, Sony, and Microsoft have all followed suit. Jijiashvili chalks this up to inflation-related pressure on game publishers.
"The games industry has already been experiencing a lot of inflationary pressure," he explains. "AAA games are much more expensive to make now than they used to be, but prices have actually been declining in inflation-adjusted terms -- if prices had risen with inflation since 1990, they would now be over $90. On top of that, we’ve had a big burst of general inflation, meaning that publishers are looking at big increases in everything from salaries to tools. It’s going to be really hard for most publishers to avoid passing on all those extra costs at some point."
Jijiashvili provided us with a graphic created by Omdia that "shows what the typical price points for each generation would look like if you adjusted for inflation." As you can see, the inflation-adjusted prices are only exponentially growing, and the big game pricing shifts the graph highlights were all technically not even enough to keep up with inflation when they happened. 

Read more