Topic: The Nintendo Switch Online Subscription Service Thread

In regards to the last post I made I feel I must delve a little deeper into how anti-consumer these online services (not just Nintendos but Sony and Microsoft) really are.

Think for a moment of Anazons Prime service. You pay a set price and you are given discounts on what you buy and what you buy is yours to do whatsoever you wish with it. PSplus offers discounts on games and free games when you buy into thier servive. However the scam cones into play when you decide to let your service lapse, those games you got for "free" or discounted all go poof as well. I know I would be extremely irked to have to give a store back products I'd been using just because I didn't renew my store credit card with them.

Now Nintendos service is easily affordable don't get me wrong but that's where the good news actually ends. Unlike PS and Microsoft that use servers Nintendo uses p2p so we are essentially paying Nintendo to use our own internet service. We get the bonus of rental games rather than being able to straight up own them as was the original idea. $20 for a year of free games with no stipulations to keep forever and play on our own time sounds great, this doesn't. Speaking of the rental service the other perk is exclusive offers! And what pray tell is the exclusive offer? A pair of $60 controllers! Not bad for it being only available to members right? Wrong! They can only be used with the rental games. So we have to pay to use our own internet, play games we don't own and buy products that are very limited in scope.

As Otis Campbell said "I think it's the fallout, it's affecting our milk!"

There are those who are enjoying the Online Service and some who don't. I don't think this is a scam imo. And I firmly believed the Switch's Online Service will get better as time goes on. It is not the fallout. People are overreacting.

@GameOtaku What makes you think games you bought at a discounted price go 'poof' if you don't maintain your subscription? That's actually not true. The "free games" bit, yes that's true. But then the Instant Game Collection's whole deal as I understand it is it's a rotating set of games members can play for that month. End of the month, the games change even if you're still subscribing.

The fact Microsoft changed the free games on xb1 to only be accessible if you remain a gold member IMO is scammy since that's just it, they changed it to that system. But neither company removes access to a game you paid for, even if it's at a discount. They might in some rare instances remove a game from the online store, but if you bought it you can still play the game.

EXAMPLE:
XB360 had something called Game Room. It's an app where you can buy arcade cabinets and console games from the 70's and early 80's. The consoles include Atari 2600 and the Intellivision. Game Room has been taken down from the store. But because I did download it in the past and bought various arcade cabinets and atari games for it, I can still download the app, the games I bought, and play those games. Similarly I still have access to the Family Game Night app and the board games for it I bought. They took it down from the online store after physical copies of Family Game Night were released that included all the games. But I can still download the app, the games I bought for the app, and play them.

@FaeKnight a minor correction, ps+ games you download are playable for as long as the sub lasts. Which is frustrating

If you paid for the game, no they aren't suddenly unplayable. If they are part of that month's free games, they are. If you paid for the game using a member discount, that just means you got a discounted price. It doesn't mean the game is only playable if you're a member.

If the game normally costs money, but you didn't pay a cent for it because it's a current free game, then you can't play it if you're not a member.

Ah, then I misunderstood. Yep that's correct.

@FaeKnight
Then I was mistaken about the discounted games. However you are still given "free" games on for being a subscriber, and if you happened to miss out on a free game then it's more than likely to appear as s discount the next month. You wouldn't expect the bank to come and repossess the tv you were given when you signed up for a new account when you found another bank that does service better and closes your old account would you? Seriously the amount of money Sony takes in from console sales, games, psplus and other merchandise they can't afford to let s few games go as free to subscribers?

I've no problem paying strictly for the classic games themselves as I dont play online (and when I do it's not enough to make up for the cost of admission). $20 for a years worth of classic games you own and never goes away sounds like an awesome idea or if they wanted to sell games a la carte $0.38 a piece as someone calculated would also be a great alternative. But paying a fee every year to rent I don't see it as being s very good deal.

Just a clarification about the NES classic games as part of the collection. They aren’t going away next month. It’s a collection that is being added onto. So in two months you can still play Mario Bros, etc.

I mean look. It sucks to have to pay for online on any console. That's true across the board no matter how many knick-knacks they toss in to make it seem like it's worthwhile.

That being said, it's a reality we have to live with and complaining about it isn't going to change anything. People who own other consoles have been dealing with this for years, so it should come as no surprise that those people really just don't give a crap anymore, and are just thankful we had as many years of free online with Nintendo as we did when everyone else was raking in $60/yr for it.

But make no mistake, other platforms aren't using dedicated servers for the majority of their games, and the few that are are doing so regardless of whether you pay for online or not. That's just a decision the developer makes and has absolutely nothing to do with the fee you're paying. Everyone keeps talking about P2P but, most online games on other platforms are P2P, and in some cases it's superior anyways.

I just wanted cloud saves for my games. People can talk about local backups but how many of us actually went through every single game we own and manually backed them up? Truthfully now. Because I know I didn't. I don't have time to manually back up hundreds of games and then every time I play a game go into the settings and back it up manually. And I can guarantee you the vast majority of people out there never manually backed up their saves either. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be a system feature because it should. But let's not pretend the benefits of cloud saves are not real. Even if you could back them up manually the benefits of cloud saves are real regardless. Unless you are the utmost nitpicker of all time and go all Nicolas Cage in Matchstick Men, you were never going to back up every save for every game you play every time you play it. In fact, most people probably didn't back up a single one... ever.

Then there's the omissions from the cloud saves. As it turns out, Deads Cells is compatible. So is NBA 2K. And judging by the preload for Dark Souls, that game is compatible as well. Which means we grossly overestimated how many games would be on the exceptions list. Now that doesn't mean it's excusable to have a game on the exceptions list. Because no game should be on the exclusion list unless it stores data server side. Splatoon 2 is inexcusable. I absolutely agree with not including it for cloud saves because that is abusable, and that would not to be a good solution to the problem. That's a problem the developer should have solved before the service launched. And if people want a solution to the problem they need to be talking to the developer. It's inexcusable on their part, not on the part of Nintendo HQ for not including it in cloud saves, and I think we can all agree with that if we actually analyze things for a second. But Nintendo HQ should have been working with the developers whose games are excluded to ensure they had an alternative means for backup. And that is on them.

Then there's the NES games. I think it's a fantastic app and slick as heck, but the online checks are intrusive and they need to figure out a way for users to download an off-line counter which tells the system when your sub expires and the games are no longer accessible, like other platforms. That's a legitimate complaint and I think we need to press them on this issue. I'm also not exactly thrilled with NES, but eventually they're going to run out of NES games, and for that reason I think SNES might be in the cards. But I don't think we'll ever see more than that because by the time they run out of those games it'll be a new generation.

As for voice chat, nobody likes the app. It's convoluted to try to run game audio and voice audio simultaneously and I just don't know why they thought this was a good idea. Having said that, it is a minor inconvenience, and I'm glad to see more games added to the app. But without system wide party chat, most developers are not going to incorporate voice chat in game, and that sucks because I wanted to voice chat in Monster Hunter. I would even be OK using the app if I could actually voice chat in the games I wanted to. The issue is more a lack of systemwide chat than it is the app, although the app is inconvenient.

So at the end of the day, the P2P complaints basically hold no water, and the exclusion list is small enough to be a minor thorn in our sides rather than a major catastrophe waiting to happen. If 200 of my 202 games are backed up I'm not going to sweat those 2 games (that I'll probably never play again anyways). If it was 25 or 30 games then there would be a serious issue. But as it stands it's really not the problem it was initially made out to be. Not to say it's excusable for these games to have no backup solutions- even one game is too many imo, but they're not wrong for excluding them from cloud saves. Their developers need to be more proactive in actually providing a solution for the players. The NES games are slick but we need more selection and they definitely need to figure out a way to get rid of the online checks every seven days, even if it won't be a problem in practice for most people. It's the principle of the matter. And although I wish voice chat was on the system, that's clearly not going to happen, so my focus is shifting to simply ensuring that we have party chat across the board. I would be willing to tolerate the app if that was the case.

There's my analysis of this matter. Some issues are over blown and some don't exist at all, while others are very legitimate criticisms. And despite not being everything I want it to be, there's definitely value on offer, and I think a little more focuse deserves to be given to the positives this online service has brought us. There was a time where cloud saves were nothing more than a dream, without so much as a peep from Nintendo as to whether we would have them. I remember people saying that's all they wanted and they would be happy. Let's not dismiss the importance of having that issue resolved, especially now that we can deactivate our accounts on their website and sign into other consoles to access our games and save data.

@FaeKnight was playing soccer earlier tearing it up in some online. Have to say I'm loving the service. Sure some things need improving but I much prefer it over VC.

@JaxonH The thing about the online checks for NES games is that now Sony is doing the exact same thing with their upgraded PSNow service.

https://blog.us.playstation.com/2018/09/20/playstation-now-ad...

But I don't see anywhere NEAR the amount of blowback against Sony for this. Why? Because it honestly does not matter in the slightest, but because it's Nintendo and online people want to latch onto ANYTHING to hate on the service. I think the service is not as good as it could be, but that specific complaint is just completely dumb, especially when a competitor is now doing the exact same thing.

@JaxonH That is probably the most comprehensive examination of the service I’ve seen, and falls pretty much in line with my thinking. As an added bonus, it doesn’t attack anyone.

Folks should remember too that improvements take time, experience, and input.

Actually, it's interesting that PS Now has been mentioned. So for $60 a year for PS+ (compared to Nintendo's $20 for NSO), they get online (like us), cloud saves (like us), free games every month (like us). However, you have to be a subscriber for the month to get those games free and to continue to be a subscriber to play those games (similar to Nintendo, but slightly different). Like if we stop subscription with Nintendo and then come back a few months later, we don't miss out on anything. On PS+, you don't get those month's of games for free. You do have access though to the ones you had previously download again though.

But...those games on PS+ that are free every month are rarely any good. You occasionally get that AAA game, but a lot of times it's indie games that most don't care about. NSO is adding NES Classic games that are beloved. No, we may not like everyone, but we all have different tastes and they were games that were highly loved in their time and still by many.

Now, onto the PS Now mentioned earlier. That's an additional subscription. While PS+ is $60 a year, that doesn't include any of the games in PS Now. PS Now is an additional price every month, quarter or year. I won't even go into the pricing for that as there are many different prices.

So Nintendo's online library that they are growing every month is all part of the same one low $20 a year subscription...unlike the other guy.

It's not that Nintendo Online doesn't provide value. I think the value is there.

The issue is, some features that people expect are either incomplete or missing entirely, even for a $20 service.

It's like... buying a car that has no AC, no heater, no radio or CD player, but comes with bucket seats and lane assist. For the price of the car, the value is there. You got your moneys worth buying that car. But you expect an air conditioner that works for the summer time. You expect a heater that works for the winter time. You expect a basic feature like a radio/CD player. The only difference is you can actually go by all these things with the car. We have no option to buy these things with regard to Switch. And that's why it's such a problem because we feel these things should be complete and on the menu, and it's a major inconvenience to downright aggravation not having them.

As for PS Now, I think perhaps the reason there is no blowback is because it is an online streaming service at heart. It's simply allowing downloads as an additional extension of the service. But at the end of the day it's a streaming service so online connectivity is expected going into it. And being on a home console, you always have access to your home Wi-Fi. With Switch, it's not a streaming service, it's monthly game downloads, and on a portable system that will often go offline. Either way I'd be just as irked with PS Now, and that's probably why I'll never use it.

The major problem everyone always overlooks is that not everyone (including myself) has an Internet connection at home. Just like I can back up my files at home on a flash drive from my switch or laptop without using the cloud service. Basic data protection should be a no brainer, no matter if you have fancy interweb access or not.

The nes games also being a part of the service also is a huge inconvenience when before you could purchase and play the games you wanted anytime you so desired compared to having limited access to a limited library of games of which you may have already purchased in the past (I've well over 100 bc on my 3ds alone and that took years). Why is basic services so hard to get through!

For NES games, just tether to your data plan with your phone for like a second if the Wi-Fi is out or if you're out and about? Only needs one check per week and it's no big deal.

Cloud saves shouldn't be the only way to backup saves, yeah, but so long as Nintendo is uber paranoid about hacking, they're probably not going to want that be a thing.

@EvilLucario
But it is a big deal to tether it to your phone when you have gasp no service at home to do such a thing. Shocking I know isn't it that Internet service isn't available everywhere all the time! I play games on my own time not Nintendo's, gamers shouldn't have to be inconvenienced simply because they can't get to Internet service for a weekly check in when you could buy them like before with vc (once you remove playing games online bit you are left with the same vc games you already purchased).

If you don’t have means to connect to the internet, I’d advice against paying for an online service.

Virtual console doesn’t exist on the switch, this is a rental service, it would make no business sense to let you play offline indefinitely when they want you to keep paying.

Either way, I’m pretty sure the 3DS, WiiU and the NES Classic Edition consoles are still pretty much functional and available. You can play most of those games there too.

@Yosheel
If there was more content for the 3ds vc (which is odd sense the last slew of vc was wiiu only tg16 games which were available on 3ds in Japan). The prospect of the ultimate vc machine that could play pretty much anything up to and including the GameCube was what I was hoping for and so far I've been extremely let down with it classic content this far since most of it focused on arcade titles.

If it's so simple for hackers to add games to the service I don't see why big n doesn't step up its game and release more than just 3 a month, have the entire vc library at your fingertips and then continue to add more. I've got the roms loaded on my 3ds that I bought from the service transfer it to my PC and drop them into the switchs sd card it searches for new classic games voila easy transfer of legacy content. Why can't it simply be that easy. With psp to vita a simply went to the online shop and looked in my downloads and redownload all my games (with maybe one exception).

My questions would be the following:

If you don't have internet access at home, what are you doing buying games that are mainly online games or paying for an online service? And why would you care about cloud save backup if you don't have internet access at home?