Topic: Nintendo Subscription worth renewing?

@SwitchForce
The opinion simple because that should be the main purpose of the online service, to play online. It’s certainly cheaper than it’s competitors but that’s about it. As far as I’m concerned Gamepass has the best value and you can purchase the games available on gamepass and play them without a subscription if you choose to give up the subscription. In fact the competition offers other ways to back up save data outside of cloud saving as well. If Nintendo offered the classic games as individual purchases and offered a way for us to back up our own data we’d be far better off. I don’t see value in needing a subscription to save a few bucks on “select games” and having the ability to spend more money on exclusive physical goods either.

Nintendo should just announce in a direct they intend to stick with our current profiles, subscriptions and digital libraries with the next console. They don't need to show me hardware before march if they're not ready, but they should clarify this point. For example: I wasn't able to buy the limited run physical release of alien isolation, and I'm willing to buy it digital...as long as I can take it with me on the next console. If they let me know just this, I'm buying the copy tomorrow (as many other games) even before knowing what the next console looks like.

@MarioLover92

You pretty much nailed it on the head. Sorry for responding back late. My dad was in the hospital this past week so it's been a trip... I had the teal game boy color loved it to bits but when upgraded to my pink original gba gave my teal gbc to my cousin who wanted it already. I got my teal gbc roughly around the same time as you maybe a year off give or take. I had it between 2000 & 2001 because the original gba was coming out. It was heaven because they put a lot of the gb & gbc on sale & stores were trying to clearance them out plus I got a lot of them used. Very few back then I bought new. Plus with the original gba I remember loving how sharp & clear the graphics were & the bigger screen size compared to my gbc. I played a ton of gb & gbc games on my original gba. Both game systems got a work out lol. I was constantly changing the double AA batteries in them. I remember having to explain that to my cousin about changing the batteries in the gbc & how to know when it was time to change the batteries in it lol. I still have all of my gb, gbc, & gba games.

I have:

Animal Crossing New Horizons
Splatoon 2
Street Fighter

There's a few others that use online I have. I'll go through them in the morning & figure out who's who lol.

Happy Gaming! (^_^)

This is definitely a large part of the value that I think a lot of people tend to ignore. Also retailers frequently have discounted eShop credit as a loss leader so you can often grab eShop credit for 10-20% off. And also the significantly lower cost per-user for family membership. They all stack and it covers the cost of NSO pretty quick if you're buying a couple of first party Nintendo titles a year.

With that said, at this very specific point in time? It's a bit harder to use that as a justification. We're at the tail end of the Switch so a lot of those first party titles that are included in the voucher program are regularly discounted. There may be some similar deal going into Switch 2 but at this point we don't know. We certainly don't know if vouchers will be usable on Switch 2 titles. Puts a bit of a ??? across the value....

.... even then, the single person membership is what, $30AU? Less than half the price of a new game. Frankly I'd gladly pay that much outright just to play F-Zero 99 for the rest of the year. I'd say it's still worth it

Very good point. Personally, there is only 1 full-price 2024 Nintendo game currently announced I plan to buy day-1 so I'm struggling to decide whether it makes sense to get a voucher this year. The February direct may or may not give me something else I want, but I suspect the ?? regarding vouchers and Switch 2 games may remain for a long time, possibly until the day Switch 2 games start selling. I really hope they keep the voucher program and it applies to a joint pool of Switch 1/Switch 2 games, but it is hard to guess, especially since (at least in North America) they have gone back and forth on the existence of vouchers even during the Switch 1 lifetime.

As for another thing regarding NSO and the transition to Switch 2, I'm really hoping cloud save will allow us to seamlessly transfer current game data to Switch 2 (at least for most games). Basically I want everything about current NSO to be totally agnostic of Switch 1 versus Switch 2, although adding additional features only for Switch 2 to encourage upgrades would be fine.

@Barbiegurl777 Oh my gosh, I hope your dad's doing all right. Hope everything's going ok.

Funnily enough, I used to want the teal Game Boy Color as a kid... I wasn't a fan of the purple variant that I had, lol. That's cool, I did see your pictures of your GB game collection earlier. I mainly just stuck with Nintendo's own games, I had Super Mario Land 1 and 2, Donkey Kong (the 1994 one), Game & Watch Gallery 1 and 2, and Pokemon Red. I had a lot more Game Boy Advance games since that was the time when I started broadening my gaming horizons beyond the stuff that Nintendo has been making.

All right that's cool. Been a long time since I last played Splatoon 2... ever since I got Splatoon 3, I haven't played much of its predecessor since. I know I've mentioned Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in the past, but they've finished the last set of DLC courses in the Booster Course Pass a couple months ago. MK8D's DLC has 48 extra courses that aren't in the Wii U original, and I had a good time with them. The DLC is free to access to those who have the NSO + Expansion Pack tier, so you could download and play it right away if you decide to get the game itself. All right cool, do let us know what other online games you like playing if you get a chance.

@GameOtaku Another missed point missed. NSO isn't just for Online playing one forgets it has Cloud game backup. Other services shouldn't be used as the same since they aren't Nintendo Services so that is a non starter here. If one hasn't seen what Sony did to paying subscriptions account then one didn't noticed Sony controls your content not the subscriber.

@SwitchForce
You can back up data in other ways on the other platforms other than cloud saves. My point still stands that unless you are using the online service (and have a constant consistent reliable internet connection) it’s not worth it vs the competition. If Nintendo offered individual titles for sale on the classic games and manual save back up to pc or the like they would be far better off.

This is a question each individual has to answer for themselves.

For me, yes. I joined 7 others here on the site in a family plan for NSO+, and only pay $10/yr for the Online Expansion Pack. That will never not be worth it for me.

Now, if I was paying $20/yr for basic online... I'd probably still do it. Just for the cloud save backups and having access to SNES. But others may feel differently. To me, $20/yr is a drop in the bucket, but even so, there has to be $20 in value for it to be worthwhile. I value the cloud saves, SNES, and even though I rarely, and I do mean rarely play online, I like being able to if and when I decide to. Like with Monster Hunter Rise or Splatoon 3

But ya. My advice is form groups of 8 and do the family plan split 8 ways, paying $10/yr each. Have one person who's respected and trusted be the group's lead, who everyone else PayPals their $10 to once per year. Then they just add your emails to their family plan and you're covered. Every year on the 1st of the month which the online expires, they should send a reminder email to the other 7 ppl, asking them to PayPal their $10 for the next year, with a 1 week period for them to send the money. If anyone doesn't, they're removed from the group and the other 7 let ppl here on the site know there's an opening for $10/yr.

I've been doing that for 3 or 4 years now. And it's fabulous getting NES, SNES, N64, GB, GBC, GBA, Genesis, online, cloud save backups and access to the voucher program for just $10 each year.

@GameOtaku
not worth it vs the competition

That's merely an opinion that will differ from person to person. For you, its not worth it vs the competition. For others, it will be. Paying $20 for access to cloud saves and retro games may be of more value to someone than paying $60 for access to cloud saves and older PS Plus games. It just depends on how interested they are in the retro games, how interested they are in the older PS Plus games, how much they value having cloud saves on Switch, how much they value having cloud saves on PS5 (I omitted Xbox as cloud saves are default on that platform), and how much those things are valued relative to the price of $20 or $60, respectively.

But at the end of the day, how it stacks up "vs the competition" to each individual is kinda irrelevant. As deciding whether to subscribe has nothing to do with how it compares to other consoles. It completely depends on whether it's worthwhile in and of itself, irrespective of competition. Someone could deem it a better deal (to them) vs PS+ but still determine its not worth it. Likewise, someone could deem it a worse deal (to them) vs PS+ but still determine its worth getting.

Evaluating whether or not to sub is completely independent of whether someone thinks it's better or worse then the competition. Better or worse doesn't matter. All that matters is, "is it worth subscribing to". Even if it's worse than PS+ it may still be worth subbing to. Even if it's better than PS+ it may not be worth subbing to.

@skywake
So much this.

I buy eShop credit from Raise for 10% Off. Then I get 5% back in gold coins on the eShop. So that's 15% Discount in total.

Add to this the games I buy via the voucher program which makes two $60 games become two $50 games (or Zelda TotK which was a $70 game that became a $50 game), and only paying $10/yr for NSO+ through the family plan split 8 ways...

And it's like, I paid $10 for the year. And just looking at Zelda TotK, I effectively got it for $42.50, which is a $27.50 savings.

The $10 I pay essentially covers the cost of having access to online and NES, SNES, N64, GB, GBC, GBA and Genesis with cloud saves. And that seems more than fair to me for $10.

The savings I get via voucher program, combined with eShop credit discount at Raise and gold coins on the eShop is just a massive bonus. Even for non-voucher games, everything I buy digitally I'm getting for 15% off. Which means $60 games are essentially $51. $40 games are essentially $34. $20 games are essentially $17. Not an earth shattering discount, but it's enough to make a difference. BestBuy's old GCU program gave us physical games for 20% off. That was $30/yr for membership and received unanimous praise as the best discount deal in all of gaming. With Raise + eShop Gold Coins, we get 15% off on all digital purchases without any membership cost. That's darn close to the GCU discount. And btw, if you buy the eShop credit at Raise using a CC that gives 2% back, you're actually saving 17% in total. And I most definitely use a CC with 2% back.

Definitely true. I mean PS+ Essentials is $8AU/month and it gives you access to a fairly sizable back catalogue of games. But in order for me to take advantage of it I'd have to go out and buy a Playstation which would blow any of the potential "savings" I'd get from getting access to a library of games for a subscription fee. Especially when a lot of the games they put on it you can find discounted elsewhere if you really wanted to grab them. I could do almost as good a job by just putting aside $8AU/mo to build up and spend on Steam sales occasionally

I paid for a subscription to Humble Monthly for a while thinking it was a good deal with a similar kind of logic. I mean, I don't regret buying it because some of that goes to charities but still. In terms of the actual value I got out of it? There were certainly some titles that I well and truly got the value out of it. But most of that stuff just sat unplayed. It makes more sense just to buy games outright when they're on sale

With NSO? I mean, the voucher stuff pays for itself as I said. I'm going to be picking up a few first party Nintendo titles a year regardless. The expansion pack I mean, I was going to buy the Mario Kart 8 and Animal Crossing DLC anyways. I've got the enjoyment I would have out of both. The online play for Nintendo games I would want anyways and there's no other way to get it so that's another reason, as much as I dislike that it's a paid service now. The classic games? They're just a nice little additional thing. So for me personally it's easily the better "value" of the services

@MarioLover92

He's doing alot better now. They put him on a low sodium diet, limit to drink 64 Oz of any liquid each day whether its water, pop juice etc, & changed all of his medications for blood pressure, heart etc. We went to the store spent hours reading back of every food trying to figure out which ones have the lowest sodium. He's restricted to 2000 per day of sodium in his diet. We figured out how to keep it to 500 or under for sodium for each meal. He looks a million times better now than before. 🥰🎉🙏 I got my dad a purple gbc & purple gba years ago on Amazon mainly because they were both cheap at the time but I'm like do you care what color the handheld is & my dad was like no just as long as it can play the games. My dad never took either handheld outside the house. He liked playing them back then mainly inside & for pinball games ironically. I loved the graphics on the GBA personally. The only thing that bugged me. I was thinking at the time I have a brand new handheld how does every gba game I buy not have a save feature?? On one hand I loved the gba games graphics & on the other hand I got so frustrated I purposely started buying more gb & gbc games on purpose to play on my gba because I knew alot of those games particularly did have save features. Not being able to use the save feature on my gba games just killed the gba experience for me. I still have my ed, edd, n eddy games for gba that ironically drew me back into playing my gba for hours on end. I still go back & play them now & again. 🤷‍♀️ I had pokemon yellow, pokemon red, pokemon blue for gb. I think the yellow version very well might have been the gbc version because mine was all in color. Picked up all 3 used at the game store for $2 each back then. Later gave my cousin pokemon blue. She asked what the difference between the 3 were. I told her from what I could tell. Pokemon yellow started off with pikachu, pokemon blue started off with squirtel, & pokemon red started off with Charizard other than that the story lines all seemed similar. I mainly bought all 3 to purposely see the difference between the games. I still plan on getting mk8. Probably in April lol. I would do it sooner but this month & next month. I can't. 🤷‍♀️🤣✌️🤙

Happy Gaming! (^_^)

I mean, I would...