Eden becomes the first Nintendo Switch emulator on the Google Play Store

At the end of last week, Nintendo Switch emulator Eden received a major update that saw the official stable release of version 0.0.3. This update fixed a number of bugs, provided some performance boosts, integrated EmuReady, and brought support for the recently released Hollow Knight: Silksong. While this update was big news, the team behind Eden has been teasing an even bigger surprise. That surprise has now been revealed.

If you head over to the Google Play Store, you’ll now find a listing for the Eden Emulator, complete with screenshots, details about the software, data safety information, and everything else you’d find in a normal app listing. That’s right, it appears Eden is now available on the Play Store for devices running on Android 11 or later. This is a significant turn of events as it marks the first time ever that a Switch emulator has been on the marketplace.

For those unfamiliar with Eden, it is a fork of Yuzu, one of the most successful and infamous Switch emulators ever. It allows users to play Nintendo Switch games on other operating systems by emulating the system. After Nintendo took Yuzu down, its code remained available due to it being open-source. Eden was created after a number of developers who were working on a different fork, Citron, left the project and formed their own group.

Although Eden is still in its early days, it’s considered one of the most exciting Switch emulation projects for Android. And this news only serves to stoke that excitement, as having a listing on the Play Store will greatly boost its visibility. However, this is also a bit of a double-edged sword since more visibility means there’s higher risk that it’ll catch Nintendo’s ever-watchful eye.