Nintendo Announces New Paid Online Service For Switch

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
Nintendo is really looking to cash in this time around. Not content with $80 controllers, the company will also be capitalizing on online services—not that there’s anything wrong with that, as their last service was free but really lacking compared to Microsoft and Sony’s offerings.

This is a departure for Nintendo, which has previously offered limited online services on a game-by-game basis (and, to some extent, on the platform level) for free on the Wii, Wii U, and DS lines. This new paid Switch service, on the other hand, seems broadly similar to the paid Xbox Live Gold and PlayStation Plus plans that are required for online gameplay on Microsoft and Sony consoles. Nintendo is promoting some benefits of the new, paid, integrated system over the previous, more ad-hoc model. For one, Nintendo will now provide online lobbies and voice chat through a "smart device app" that lets players "invite friends, set play appointments, and chat during online matches in compatible games."
 
Paywalled multiplayer is a huge turn off. Companies are greedy, I get that. What I don't get is why people put up with this bullshit. They literally donation to a cause devoted to make things worse for the consumer. Paid voice chat? Really motherfucker?
 
While I agree with what DGZ said, But now you need Xbox live and PS Plus. If i want to play destiny with another human I need to pony up the money.
 
I'm not a fan of paid online multiplayer, and, as a PC player, I don't really have to pay anything for it at this point, but I understand the reasoning for them. I'm not overly upset that Nintendo went this route, in fact, I almost expected it.

My issue, as it stands right now, is that Nintendo has the most difficult to navigate storefront on the market right now. XBL and PS Plus are both easy to navigate, easy to buy a game from, and, usually, just kinda work. While I don't want to pay for an online service, I understand that they aren't free to run. Those costs can be recouped in many ways, but at least with programs like XBL and PS Plus, you get more than JUST online play. My hopes are that Nintendo uses the money they make from this service to greatly improve their online services. PS3's online service was notorious for crashes and bugs, but, as far as I've seen and read, ever since it went paid, the quality has improved drastically. If Nintendo does the same, I feel everyone's anger would recede a little bit.

Fortunately, getting together with a bunch of friends that also have a switch and doing local co-op does not have a charge. Which is most of what I'll likely do with my Switch.
 
While I agree with what DGZ said, But now you need Xbox live and PS Plus. If i want to play destiny with another human I need to pony up the money.

Ye, its unfortunately the new standard.
 
I am so not a fan of paid multiplayer, especially not from the company that still has no unified account system and is a decade behind everyone else in online functionality. If they're going to go the paid route they had damn well better have online at least as good as the Xbox One. It had better not be as half-assed as Sony's paid service. Also, they need to do better than renting a single 20-30 year old game to users for a single month. That is pathetic and clearly shows they have no idea why people like that part of PS+ or XBL Gold.
 
Paywalled multiplayer is a huge turn off. Companies are greedy, I get that. What I don't get is why people put up with this bullshit. They literally donation to a cause devoted to make things worse for the consumer. Paid voice chat? Really motherfucker?

Here Here! When people stop paying for this "access" shit, it'll once again become part of the game purchase. I would rather pay a little more for a game, then be "Once and Done". All of these subscriptions people have, from phones to games, add up to a lot of money each month.
 
No no no! Say it with me: "Premium Service"

Paying to use the games you already bought is good, it makes the experience "special".

But it's worth it because servers cost money to run even though they wouldn't let people run their own servers like they used. Mental cardio
 
Oh ffs, ask valve how much steam costs to run with zero additional cost to the user. You know, that thing that dwarfs xb/ps.

Valve does pull in like a billion+ in sales every year. That does help.
 
I guarantee every game you buy will give at least 1 month of nintendo online service, even if they are offline games.
 
Don't most console games use peer to peer anyway? What are they even pretending that you are paying for?
 
As for multiplayer, most Nintendo games I enjoy (so far) are offline with the exception of Mario Kart. I can easily live without online. If they decide to require online to access or finish a part of the game I simply won't buy it. If they abandon offline multiplayer, I won't buy the system.

They can fiddle with hardware, input devices, network and pricing schemes all they want but Nintendo's long-standing history of delayed and trickled game dev cycle will be their demise. They continue to focus on auditing which games get released and fixate on their own idea of innovation and presentation over quality games that are simply fun. Their business practice turns off third party developers.

Nintendo has an extreme reluctance to approve a game that borrows too many traits from previous successful titles, especially without some sort of gimmick to distract from how enjoyable it really is. It stifles game development freedom and more often than not results in something they are trying to avoid in the first place. I can't imagine the amount of unnecessary pressure and the toxic environment produced when developers are constantly in fear of their work being scrapped due to this broken logic. This stubborn willingness to avoid advancement of existing gameplay and obsession of form over function is what I refer to as Miyamoto Syndrome.

I have a difficult time believing they have learned from the past and are simply trying to ride the success of their portables. The only benefit I see is consolidating their development environment and product lineup. It has always been about the games. Online service, although attractive to third parties, is just another distraction from their biggest weakness in-house. Edit: minor sentence flow problems fixed
 
Last edited:
I am so not a fan of paid multiplayer, especially not from the company that still has no unified account system and is a decade behind everyone else in online functionality. If they're going to go the paid route they had damn well better have online at least as good as the Xbox One. It had better not be as half-assed as Sony's paid service. Also, they need to do better than renting a single 20-30 year old game to users for a single month. That is pathetic and clearly shows they have no idea why people like that part of PS+ or XBL Gold.


Nintendo's past online offerings have been lacking and poorly implemented. I doubt this will change.

Xbox Live gives you up to 4 games each month (2 for the 360, and 2 for the Xbox One).
It's let me build a large Xbox 360 collection, and if I ever buy an Xbox One, I'll already have a good collection to start with.
Well worth the discounted cost when you buy it on sale.

Looks like one more reason not to buy the Switch.
 
Ye, its unfortunately the new standard.

Only if people buy in to it. Consoles are a lot less compelling today than 15 or 20 years ago. There aren't too many platform locked must-play games anymore, especially since software is much more portable these days and accountants don't want to leave any market share on the table. Bribes, er, bonuses for being platform exclusive are drying up, too.

Mechanics don't stay new very long and get heavy homages and outright ripoffs a little while later on other titles. Even among high quality Nintendo 1st party titles, the creativity that leads interesting gameplay seems to be pretty stagnant.

Valve does pull in like a billion+ in sales every year. That does help.

Benefits of an incredibly wide array of titles to suit many tastes with very little intervention from on high. It's the long tail without that annoying physical inventory collecting dust in your warehouse. Compare to console companies that rule with an iron fist: anointing the lucky few with dev kits, expensive and time consuming QA approval processes, content policing & ESRB restrictions, and protection from anything that can modify the game experience.
 
Paywalled multiplayer is a huge turn off. Companies are greedy, I get that. What I don't get is why people put up with this bullshit. They literally donation to a cause devoted to make things worse for the consumer. Paid voice chat? Really motherfucker?

The only way to avoid it is to either not play online multiplayer games or only play games on PC, which some people aren't willing to do. There are some games that simply aren't available on PC still. PC has a serious lack of sports games for example. I don't personally care about 99% of the console exclusives but there are those who do. Between the monthly online fees and poor framerates consoles just really aren't for me, but I can acknowledge not everyone has the same tastes.

Online multiplayer fees aren't that different than cell phone data plans really. You are getting massively overcharged for those too, but what is the alternative apart from getting a "dumb" phone that probably can't do most of the things you want?
 
Valve does pull in like a billion+ in sales every year. That does help.

Too bad Nintendo is just a broke, struggling indie game company that can't afford to run their own servers to let customers use for free as a value added service.
 
Too bad Nintendo is just a broke, struggling indie game company that can't afford to run their own servers to let customers use for free as a value added service.

Paid online for consoles is crap, but Valve is a bad comparison.
 
What Nintendo needs to do is either:

1) Become a cloud based streaming gaming company, that will play on a variety of devices from smart TVs, rokus, xbox, PS4, and PC like Netflix, which will allow you to play their entire library of games going all the way back to the 80s on the original NES.

2) Do the same, with the before mentioned cloud based streaming gaming company, but on your own proprietary console, but generation proof so that when the next console comes out, you still have the same online cloud based account with all your games that still work all the same on the new streaming device they sell you.

Especially with their legacy games, the fact that they are so tiny should make that a non-issue, and that way people don't have to rebuy the same game a thousand times and worry that it won't be compatible when the next console launches. And if they abandon selling hardware entirely, they can hit a far wider player base and their hardware was always pretty crappy anyway.
 
What gets me about this is that Nintendo's online services have always been laughably bad...unless they severely revamped their system (which I kind of doubt) they can shove it.
 
What gets me about this is that Nintendo's online services have always been laughably bad...unless they severely revamped their system (which I kind of doubt) they can shove it.

We'll see come March. Really I'm hoping by the time the free trial ends (sometime this fall) Nintendo will realize they're being stupid and keep it free.
 
only nintendo games i played anymore are couch games. this is not going to bode well with their consumers. As long as it is not gimped for not paying for the online service. idgaf about playing mario kart with some random kid, i want to play with my friends on the couch with pizza and beer.
 
Valve does pull in like a billion+ in sales every year. That does help.

Steam is simply and plainly a more successful sales machine than either Sony or Microsoft? I found this article pointing to Microsoft's gaming division bringing in more than ~$1.5B for both hardware and XB Live sales (with MS losing money on the hardware). And another at VG247.com putting the figure at $1.9B. Nowhere is it easily discerned how much Live revenue was solely from selling subscriptions, which of course could be the overwhelming majority of where it's revenue IS derived, versus games and content sold. So, maybe Steam IS better.

If I pay $60 for a physical or virtual copy of a game, it should have all content and capability enabled that is listed for the product. Online play should be accessible without additional charges on the console if the same game offers that same play for free on the PC, i.e, host-while-playing and end-to-end multiplayer, especially on Xbox. And we haven't even touched on the lack of cross-platform compatibility in games appearing on both Xbox and PC considering they run on the same OS.

The fact is MS put a pretty wrapper on a specifically configured PC, rebranded it and is making those who made the initial investment continue to pay as though everything is a lease if they want to continue enjoying their "purchase(s)". The same content purchases the PC community sees as a one-and-done affair. Pretty damn sad!
 
Someday, someone is going to have to explain how paying $40-60/year (there are frequent sales) for Xbox Live is a bad deal despite getting 24-48 free games (to keep, even if you stop subscribing) a year in addition to enabling online multiplayer. Even if one has no interest in 75% of them, that's still 8-12 games. I guess if one wants to complain about Xbox Live in 2008 that's fair, though pointless.
 
I am so not a fan of paid multiplayer, especially not from the company that still has no unified account system and is a decade behind everyone else in online functionality. If they're going to go the paid route they had damn well better have online at least as good as the Xbox One. It had better not be as half-assed as Sony's paid service. Also, they need to do better than renting a single 20-30 year old game to users for a single month. That is pathetic and clearly shows they have no idea why people like that part of PS+ or XBL Gold.

As for multiplayer, most Nintendo games I enjoy (so far) are offline with the exception of Mario Kart. I can easily live without online. If they decide to require online to access or finish a part of the game I simply won't buy it. If they abandon offline multiplayer, I won't buy the system.

They can fiddle with hardware, input devices, network and pricing schemes all they want but Nintendo's long-standing history of delayed and trickled game dev cycle will be their demise. They continue to focus on auditing which games get released and fixate on their own idea of innovation and presentation over quality games that are simply fun. Their business practice turns off third party developers.

Yea Nintendo is so far behind microsoft in this field that I don't see how this is going to work. Hell look at Sony, they claimed they were going to beat MS at it and do it for free at first. Yea that never happened. I remember trying to play smash brothers online and how bad it was.

What gets me is this talk of free for a month on the virtual consoles games with it. WTF let us have them at this point. Let us play them across every nintendo console we have that supports this online platform. Work on releasing more games as it isn't hard to make sure they run right in the emulator nintendo is using.

The other part talks more to blkt's post. What games does nintendo have for multiplayer that will be worth it for whatever the online system costs? Their very underpowered hardware means that most 3rd party games will suck on it vs on the ps4 and xbox one let alone the ps4 pro and the comming xbox one scorpio. Mario kart could be good, as could smash brothers. Past that you have splatoon and maybe some pokemon game. With nintendo's ability to make an entire 1 game person ip per console(two if we are luckly) I see this being a very cold and dead presence online.
 
Nintendo seems extra delusional this time around. This may top the XBox One's botched launch, in doing almost everything wrong. Also, paying for online MP is trash, but at least XBL gives me 40+ free games a year. That's how I justify it. I only buy 3 or 4 games a year, if that, but I have tons to play.
 
Oh goodie, I can't wait to see how N fucks this up. Look I was adamantly against PSN+ and Live for years because they services didn't justify their existence. They were just a blatant paywall holding back multiplayer. They sold me when they started including free games every single month. Xbox is worth the money because I can get it for $36 a year. PSN+ is worth the $50 it costs me because I get free games on not only my PS4, but my PS3 as well. My kids for obvious reasons love this and the constant flow of new games is more than worth the little it costs. What is N offering? only MP and some shitty voice app that requires my phone? Well fuck that...They had better come up with something a tiny bit better or the switch will remain an "offline" device.

Also like hell my kids are using my phone for voice. Who on earth ever thought a device that is largely aimed at the younger generation should require a smart phone to fully use? Seriously LMFAO.
 
Someday, someone is going to have to explain how paying $40-60/year (there are frequent sales) for Xbox Live is a bad deal despite getting 24-48 free games (to keep, even if you stop subscribing) a year in addition to enabling online multiplayer. Even if one has no interest in 75% of them, that's still 8-12 games. I guess if one wants to complain about Xbox Live in 2008 that's fair, though pointless.

They're locking a basic service behind a paywall. If I buy the latest CoD or Battlefield on my PC, I install it, I get online, and I play it. $60 out the door, ready to play the game for the rest of forever. If I buy the latest CoD on my Xbox, then I need to give another 5 bucks simply to go online and play multiplayer, a.k.a. the biggest part of the game. That takes the cost from $60 to $65 the first month, $70 the second month, $75 the third month, etc. That's exaggerating a bit, as I'm assuming that CoD is all I'll ever play, but it makes the point.

I shouldn't be forced to pay a fee to play online. With Microsoft's sales figures for all things Xbox, running an online service should not even put a dent in their budget.

I think if Microsoft offered all of the other features of XBL memberships and allowed players to play online without it, they'd still make quite a bit of money on it. It's a great deal for the games alone. Just stop forcing it on us by locking out basic features.
 
Back
Top