Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

I don't know about you, but I'm sort of going into this year (or financial year by now) anticipating an NSO price increase.
Prior to the Switch 2 Direct, I was expecting it to coincide with the arrival of GameCube games but that came and went with no change and in hindsight, they probably wanted to protect it from the other price increases happening at the time.

I wonder what they'll offer to soften the blow when it eventually comes though? I mean, the two things that immediately come to mind are DS NSO (still not entirely sure about the logistics of this though) and/or the elusive NSO Playtest game. These will likely both be exclusive to the Expansion Pack, if they boot up the price of the base tier as well then maybe there's a chance they'll move certain consoles down. GBA or N64 if anything, although given the Pokemon debacle I doubt this will happen.

From a purely transactional point of view this isn't really that different to charging $30AU for Pokemon ROMs. They sell a classic games subscription and then later on append this additional content which has an additional mandatory fee in order to access it. Of course the obvious difference is that the physical form of the Virtual Boy is kinda the main point of the Virtual Boy. And the physical form is naturally a physical product. Even so, functionally it's not that different

But yeah, as @Haruki_NLI suggested, there's something to be said about the reasonable expectations of the service when you subscribed. Like how I subscribed to Netflix in the 2010s there was a whole lot more content for a much lower fee than we get now. In terms of NSO I would argue that Virtual Boy was fairly low on the list of expected software to be delivered on NSO for the average user subscribing. It was certainly a surprise to me when they announced it that's for sure

Pokemon is a bit different I think. I think for most people when they hear "Nintendo Classics" including GameBoy and GameBoy Advance? They think Pokemon. And even though I personally wasn't really expecting to see Pokemon on NSO I must admit when I got that Nintendo Today notification the first thing I did was message a friend and say "they put Pokemans on NSO!" followed a few minutes later by "oh, it's a standalone thing. that's silly"

To be clear, I don't think either of these count as "anti-consumer". Not even remotely. But if we're going for "charging additional for assumed content" bit then I'd argue there's not much contest here

From my POV when you are paying for NSO you are paying for what currently exists on the service. I don’t pay for Netflix now with the expectation that a show I like will come in some indeterminate amount of time. Nothing is being taken from you.

If anything, Nintendo is generally more “pro-consumer” in this sense because they very rarely remove games from NSO. Compare with PS Plus and Game Pass which have titles leave monthly - what you have access to now you won’t necessarily have access to at the end of an annual subscription.

@Nintoz As someone who still has never quite decided expansion pack is worth it (I'm talking about at full price not the weird family pricing) it would feel odd to me for them to increase price. They missed the chance to add pokemon which would have added worth, they have been avoiding Nintendo Switch 2 editions besides the original Zeldas, and virtual boy is both very niche and not free. They haven't really added all that much lately.

Adding GameCube last year was nice, but that was kind of at the expected level for a service people have ro pay for every year.

Adding DS eventually would probably make the service worth it to me personally but maybe not if they increased price also.

That said... they could easily increase price for basic NSO; people need online play so they kind of have a captured audience.

@Buizel I'm not sure that's true, Nintendo often advertises what games will be coming up, just not when, which seems slightly egregious to me.

@FishyS Increasing base NSO risks people moving more to FTP games like ditching Splatoon in favour of Fortnite. I see Expansion Pack more likely to get a price increase if any.

@FishyS They will likely need to figure out the 2 screens issue before DS can be added. But this would allow them to add 3DS with switch 3. I doubt they would add Wii or Wii U anytime soon (maybe switch 4) as they would just resell those at full price.

@Buizel I am only aware of one game being removed, I think it was a soccer licensed game for NES or SNES.

Is anyone else aware of any others that have been removed from NSO?

@RobLife1, no other games have left the NSO service yet besides that soccer game.

I really hope that we don't see a NSO price increase anytime soon. While it is a good value, it's not as good of a value as I was anticipating with the SW2 launch. I guess I am naive - I was thinking that Nintendo would include any SW2 paid update in the expansion pack. Who knows what is going to happen...if there is a price increase, I hope it comes along with added benefits.

Out of curiosity do we know how many people actually subscribe to expansion pack? In both 2025 and 2024 we were told there were 34 million NSO subscribers (which is just over 1/4th of the yearly active Switch users) but I Don't recall Nintendo releasing numbers for expansion pack. If expansion pack is only a small percentage of that 34 million it would presumably change the strategy.

Not necessarily. Given the expansion pack is a fairly limited scope thing, as is, if the subscriber base were sufficiently small they would likely just factor that in to how much budget it would ( not ) get for new additions.

I want to drag the conversation back to the FireRed and LeafGreen ports for a minute. Not about the price, but about Pokémon HOME support. I just had a thought and didn't know where else to share it. Hear me out: the games just might not be getting Pokémon HOME support. Allow me to explain. The games are supposed to basically be straight-up ports with no changes, hence the seperate language versions. For one thing, that would mean that Pokémon from the future games wouldn't be able to be transferred, since they are from regions like Galar and Paldea. FireRed and LeafGreen don't have code for the dialogue "first caught in the Paldea Region" like the dialogue that you would see if the Pokémon came from another game.

Now to explain the absence of online play. Back in the day of FireRed and LeafGreen, the games didn't have the annoying swear word and the like filters that the games have now. That basically means you can use whatever naughty word that you want when you nickname a Pokémon. And if you could reveal those nicknames in online battles... and send those naughty nickname Pokémon to other modern Pokémon games through Pokémon HOME... I think you get the point now 😜.

Still excited for LeafGreen though. I can't wait to name my rival "*sshat" 🤣.

@Nep-Nep-Freak It will be exactly the same as the classic Pokémon games on the 3DS.
No Pokémon game received Bank/Home compatibility at launch.

@Nep-Nep-Freak But they may have code for "from a far off region" which Pokémon HOME can change the location to before sending in.

Or they just do what Pokémon Bank does. You can send to HOME, but not back to Bank.

You can transfer FROM FRLG, but not TO them.

@FishyS
I have Expansion Pack and rarely even use it.

Pathetic, I know.

But the really dumb thing is that Nintendo doesn’t let you easily revert your subscription to just the base NSO. I would have to cancel my current sub and then resubscribe at the base level.

That is messed up.

@rallydefault Oh, really? Interesting! I was considering downgrading, actually, so I'll take that into account.

That's weird and dumb; I always assumed it was easy to go back and forth. I guess your save files would still exist so being temporarily unsubscribed doesn't really matter... but I really like me 7+ year NSO streak and wouldn't want to break it 😆

You get a 180 day grace period for cloud saves, so canceling and rejoining at the lower tier shouldn't cause any issues there.

Just don't cancel and forget to rejoin until you're right on the limit, I suppose.

Having a 7 year streak is nice, but not really good for anything other than the bragging rights. It's not like Nintendo offer any rewards for long-term subscribers, unfortunately. If anything, canceling and rejoining can net you a better deal, because they sometimes offer bonus months to new subscribers..

@FishyS
lol yea I’ve had NSO since day one, so I don’t want to lose the streak.