Surprise — you have one more device capable of watching Crunchyroll content now. The Nintendo Switch just got the app, which means thousands of hours of anime content both free and paid can be enjoyed no matter where you are. The Crunchyroll app supports docked, undocked and tabletop modes, as well as the ability to watch content offline.
No, we have no idea why the Crunchyroll app wasn’t there from the beginning, or why it didn’t appear until now. Watching anime was already possible on Switch thanks to the Funimation app being supported there, but that one was a later addition to the eShop as well. Streaming apps as a whole have a weird rollout history on Switch, with Hulu being the only one that was there from nearly the beginning.
There are still many streaming services that can’t be viewed on Switch, the biggest one being Netflix. You could watch Netflix on the Wii U and even the 3DS, but the console that is now more successful than both of them combined does not have it. Make sense? …It’s Nintendo, of course it doesn’t.
This makes, altogether, five apps capable of streaming things on the Switch: Crunchyroll, Funimation, Hulu, YouTube and Twitch. If you count the Pokemon TV app that rotates episodes of the show and movies, that makes six. Maybe it’ll get Peacock in about a year, who knows.
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Does the Nintendo Switch version have any advantage over their Smart tv Google store version? I prefer installing games on my Switch. I like the Idea of watching offline though because there are times my Internet sucks and I will need some offline content to entertain me.