Topic: Will Nintendo likely to eventually add a purchase option to NSO/ Expansion Pak?

Is Nintendo likely to add a purchase option to the games offered on NSO and Expansion Pak? Imagine the backlash if the games that we worked our save files on get lost permanently if they pull them off the server. I can see them carry the subscription over to the next console but I’m sure this will end at some point even if in the distant future.

@Don For six years nintendo has held fast their new stance on retro games. Virtual Console is dead (Virtual Console = buying retro nintendo games). I'm sure most NL users would agree it's been quite disappointing that we can't purchase the games that have reliably sold on VC for previous consoles. I don't expect anything to change. I welcome being wrong, but it's been almost six years now. I would have bought Banjo Kazooie. I've never played it before. But, I'm not paying $50 USD for a one year rental of that game.

edit: Unfortunately, I bet they profit more from the model they've taken to for the switch. They only had to port a tiny handful of games at an surprisingly slow rate, rather than porting a much larger library of retro games.

@neonpizza I totally agree with that. I'd even welcome a 3 month or 6 month sub.

I mean, you were kinda doing that with the VC model already. Digital purchase is a limited licence in the same way the subscription is and, excuse Australian pricing, but for the full single person NSO+ expansion price in Australia for a year you would've been able to buy maybe 6 VC games a year. ~9 if they were just NES/GB titles, ~4 if they were just N64 games. And that's ignoring the family membership and other benefits like the DLC and game vouchers

Also the way I brought games on the VC? You probably weren't going to download Banjo, I mean I certainly wasn't. And that's the other strength of a subscription model for consumers. If you ask people to make a decision on every single transaction they're going to play it safe. They're going to go with games they specifically have nostalgia for or are sure they'll be into. You're not going to take risks with Stunt Race FX or Alone in the Dark. You would've brought Tetris, Pokemon, Super Mario Bros and Ocarina of Time. Again.

Personally? Over the last couple of months I was looking at maybe picking up a portable for emulating some of my old GB games. Maybe getting a modded GB with a better screen. I'd re-brought a bunch of GB games on the 3DS VC but at this point the 3DS is a dead end. But I have NSO so there's Wario Land 3, Link's Awakening, Super Mario Land 2 and Tetris. Already a pretty solid collection there on day 1

No, I think Nintendo highly values their back catalogue and thinks their fans do too, so they want them to pay recurring fees to continue to access them. I doubt they'll allow you to pay a one time fee to download them. I am hopeful that they're also doing this so they don't have to keep reinventing the wheel porting the same games every time and we won't go back to square one next gen, but I think the days of one time purchases for retro games are probably over.

@neonpizza Ohh, what if we got those pirate multicart cartridges for the switch. You know, like the ones we've seen for DS & 3DS on ebay & amazon. ....And they had Banjo Kazooie on it, or whatever retro games you wanted to purchse? XD Man, that would be sweet. Although, I have low confidence that those pirated multicarts will happen for the Switch, or have Banjo on them.