Topic: How would you improve the NSO Online service?

You've done this argument to death for years in one form or another and been proven wrong multiple times. Nobody is forcing you to buy it so find something better to do

And in any case this statement here is a huge strawman. That isn't the bar NSO+ has to clear in order to become good value. The bar it has to clear is for the collective value of the things you would have otherwise purchased to be more than the price of NSO. For me it clears it, easily

I've done this before but since it's a new thread lets do it again. NSO+ Expansion for a single user is $60AU/year. What do I get for that? Lets start with the Game Voucher program. The voucher drops every game that's part of the program down to $67.50. I'm about to pick Bayonetta and Pokemon so I'll be using it for that, that's $5 there vs retail and $25 vs eShop prices. I usually buy around 4 games a year doing this, so that's $10-50 right there

Then there's the DLC packs. Speaking for just myself I know I would've brought both the Mario Kart 8 and Animal Crossing DLC over the past year. This is the first year of the program so lets assume that going forward there'll only be around 1 DLC a year I would've done the same for. That's $37AU for one DLC pack. So lets round this off and conservatively we're sitting at $45AU of value all up right now

Now we get to the classic games, at this point the value gap it has to fill given my usage of the above perks is only $15AU/year. Now the question you asked I'll rephrase, how many classic games would I have brought on average per year and are they worth $15AU? And I know the answer to this because I brought classic games from Nintendo for about a decade from ~2007-2017. From memory, and excluding 3DS ambassador, it totalled something around 10 NES, 9 SNES, 3 N64, 4 GB(C) and 1 SMS. IIRC Nintendo charged $15AU for N64, $8AU for SNES, $5AU for NES/GB/SMS. So $192AU or ~$19/year over that 10 year period. So NSO+ expansion is cheaper for me, objectively

And that's before I even consider the fact that:
1. I also brought a SNES Mini during that 10 year period
2. You can pick up eShop credit discounted (eg next week there's a store here doing 15% off)
3. You can slash the price considerably with family membership
4. The base membership is required for online play (most people play online believe it or not)
5. Additional games they've done like Tetris 99
6. The NSO Game Trials

I'd wager that anyone who's a big enough "fan" to be on this forum and looked at the financial equation objectively would find that it works out to be a good value. I'm sure Nintendo is making more money with NSO than they did with the old model and it would definitely be a more reliable revenue stream. But people on this forum? We're not the ones they're making additional money from with this scheme. They're making more money from the casuals. But feel free to wish for a time when Nintendo milked more cash from its more dedicated fans of which you are most definitely one

Overall I don't think its a particular bad service, but I wouldn't say it is particularly great either.

In all honesty - if it wasn't for playing Monster Hunter Rise online I would probably cancel.

I have no issue with the 'drip feed' of games month-by-month, but the quality (and quantity) of these games vary so much. There are still so many SNES and N64 games I'd love to see, especially from outside the 1st party remit. N64 classics such as Blast Corps, Silicon Valley & Body Harvest would be fantastic...

Some of the DLC packs are nice, eg Animal Crossing/Mario Kart.... but completely devoid of value if you don't have the base games of course!

I think the kicker for me is the price-point. If NSO Online (+ expansion) was 50% of current price then I really couldn't complain much. But I think it is fairly inflated vs the actual 'service' (aka content) it provides.

However, all being said it was nice to see the N64 roadmap - GoldenEye and the Mario Party games will be awesome, and Nintendo need to keep this momentum IMO

@CJD87
I think that's true of pretty much all of these kinds of subscription services. The value they have is purely a function of how much you use them because every single service if used has enough value you can get out of it.

For example, Disney+ is one of the more expensive services I have and it's also one of the ones I use I happen to not be "borrowing" a login from family. So it's high on the list for cost, especially for me. But I also use it probably more than any service I use outside of Spotify, so the value is still great. On the other end Amazon Prime has The Boys, The Rings of Power and free shipping. Which makes itself worth it if one of those shows has new episodes or if I want to buy something but, for me, that's certainly not every month. Most months it has zero value to me

NSO and the expansion is the same. If you're enough of a Nintendo fan that you can get value out of it it's great. If you can share it with others then even better. And the bar for it to be worth it isn't particularly high. As I showed above for a single user it's like 4x games with a voucher + 1x DLC + ~2 NES/SNES/N64 games at the old VC prices. Less if you're sharing a family membership amongst 3 or more.

For some? They won't hit that line, on average people buy closer to 2 games/year and not everyone is interested in classic games. Some people also would have no interest in the DLC or online. Some people will have some sort of allergy to the idea of paying a subscription entirely. But I think for most people on this forum, i.e. the enthusiasts, they're going to clear that bar. Most people posting here would get value out of it as it is

Generally, I think a lot of the dislike about the NSO is a dislike without an alternative. We know what the alternative was, we had it for a decade before the Switch. It was not better, at least not for enthusiasts

Offering a free tier for people who only want the online to play games with others and don't get use out of any of the offered features. Why pay 20 bucks a year for Online that isn't even run on dedicated servers, but rather is hosted Peer to Peer? Why pay for Cloud Saves that don't cover the games that actually need them, like Splatoon, Animal Crossing, and Pokemon? Why force people to pay for old games they may or may not want?

I know Nintendo will never offer a free tier, but I wish they did.

@skywake I'm an "enthusiast", and I don't think I get much value out of the online. I only pay for it because I have to, or I can't play with my friends. Outside of that, I'd much rather it be free since I feel like most of the things we're paying for is practically worthless.

I have to be honest and say I would be happy with no service and online gaming being free (y'know, like it used to be.) I'm happy Nintendo at least try to keep as near to this as they can with their 20 quid a year tier but yeah, I can appreciate they have to keep up with the other 2 larger companies.

I'm happy with the service, but there is always room for improvement, things I would like include:-
1. A proper solution to chat
2. Achievements, not in an over the top way, but maybe a completed game list and 2 or 3 other achievements per game max
3. Gamecube games - even if this was a further price tier
4. If a new price tier include another 3rd party system such as the SEGA Dreamcast
5. More exclusive games, maybe use some old IP...imagine an online ice climbers game or something
6. Bring back Mario 35!!

The problem with this conversation is that you have 2 or 3 different conversations going on in parallel and none of the people involved seems to realise this and so it just always ends up in a massive waste of time.

There's one line of conversation about whether you should have to pay for playing games online at all.

There's one line of conversation about whether the NSO apps are better or worse than the VC was on Wii. This one tends to dominate because it also has lots of sub-debates about quality of emulation, presentation, ownership of physical vs digital games and value for money. All of which might be somewhat related but are themselves distinct things.

Then there's another line of conversation about comparing NSO to PS+ or XBox Live Gold etc.

Honestly I'm with @Skywake in his analysis - if you're a big enough fan to be posting online about Nintendo games then it is 100% good value.

To engage with the "the VC was much better I wish they'd give me the option to buy old Nintendo games again" debate line though - I think this is really flawed. Firstly because Nintendo continues to give opportunities to buy their key titles in lots of different formats - you can buy a stand-alone Game & Watch that has 3 Zelda games on it if you need to feel that you own it. Secondly I'd guess that anyone who's committed enough to be worried that they might one day lose access to Earthbound on the SNES already has a folder of SNES roms on their hard-drive that's far more extensive than any company could ever hope to offer for sale.

Thirdly - you can actually buy (as in buy to "own") on the eShop most of the notable non-Nintendo owned games from the 8 and 16 bit era. Companies like Digital Eclipse, M2 and Arcade Archives have done a great job and often the emulation, presentation and context for these games is far superior to what Nintendo has ever offered - NSO or VC or otherwise.

What I'd really like to see from Nintendo is better presentation and historical context for the games - kind of like what @Bass_X0 said (but in slightly different ways). The experience of a new player jumping in to Zelda 1 for instance is not comparable to the experience of playing it back in the day - there was a map in the box and the manual told you lots of things (like how and where to try bombing walls) that simply aren't given to you in the game and so much of the experience of playing it was a "school-yard knowledge" kind of thing. The same is true for so many of those older games - the rewind function and save states allow you to brute force your way through but they do so at the expense of allowing you to actually play the games as they were intended.

I actually think that every game needs a mini-NES Remix style set of challenges that teach you where to find the most notable hidden power-ups and how to break the game in ways that "everyone" knew at the time. I mean NES Remix had a round of SMB that teaches you how to do the infinite lives trick - I'd like to see challenges like those built in to the NSO apps - even if it was only 3 or 4 challenges per game.

What I'm saying is that in many ways NES Remix was and remains Nintendo's most successful attempt to repackage the gameplay experience of their old games.

@MarioBrickLayer Hard agree on achievements...

I've sadly become a bit of a trophy-hunter on PS, and it would be great to have something equivalent on NSO... maybe even with some kind of reward/points scheme for attainment for 'difficult' achievements?

Something along those lines would be amazing

@CJD87 I don't think they need to go crazy with achievements, I'd be happy with a completed game list and one or two more per game, but you're right they could have something more for hardcore players!

@skywake
Paying $50 a year for an online service and not having any internet service nor any interest in online play is ridiculous. As the meme goes “why not both”? Why are non subscribers forced to pay for a service they don’t use to access a drip feed of games they’ve no interest in to lose access to every other week due to the check in required. To me and many others the value is in a self curated collection of games we can purchase individually. It only requires us to visit the eshop and buy games we want and can play anytime without having to have lots of other games just fill up precious space.

@NeonPizza
You mean it’s UI is boring. No themes beyond Black and White. More options is always better. I don’t see the value in an online service as I’m strictly a single player, couch co op kinda guy. I’ve no home internet so paying $50 for the subscription is insane compared to buying and enjoying games I love at any time I want.

Many times we don’t get the compilations as others get. Remember the Disney Afternoon Collection? The collection of nes games that are very well regarded by pretty much everyone? It has never appeared on Switch. Heck Ninja Gaiden 2 and 3 haven’t even gotten on NSO yet and the original was one of the first on the service and you can get them all on VC on 3ds.

GAMECUBE

To be brutally honest what you're saying makes absolutely zero logical sense. If as you say you have no internet service and yet somehow are also on these forums AND have enough disposable income for a Switch AND classic games. Then you should have an internet service of some kind. If you don't then your priorities are way out of whack. And even if you somehow don't have an internet service then the eShop option of downloading classic games piecemeal is no better. Because you need to jump onto the eShop anyways, which is also online, and if you are at all into it it ended up being more expensive then NSO anyways

And on the other side? If as you said you have "zero interest" in the games on NSO then what's the issue? Don't subscribe. Problem solved

edit: and on themes, more isn't always better. I don't know about you but I don't spend that much time in the GUI before I play a game. I boot up my console to play games. Themes would be nice sure but the real metric we should care about is speed, the faster it is the better. I'd take the Switch over any console I've ever owned and even my PC for UI/startup speed

To be blunt, what it seems you really want is a 3DS. Again. Although obviously not because you'd then complain about the eShop closure and the way that Nintendo rightly limited SNES games to the New 3DS

Just commenting on this sentiment because I actually think it's a pretty valid position to have. I'd go as far as saying I actually agree with it for most of the games that are on NSO. Or at least if I was to "value" them at the old VC prices

I would have gladly paid somewhere between $5-20AU to "buy" some of the games that are on NSO. I know I would have because I did pay that on 3DS/Wii U/Wii. Games like Super Mario Kart, Paper Mario, Mario Kart 64, Ocarina of Time, Donkey Kong Country, StarFox, Stunt Race FX, F-Zero X etc, etc. But there are games on NSO I wouldn't have bothered with and haven't even loaded even with access. Am I going to play even 10% of the Mega Drive games? Probably not. Would I have paid money for them specifically? Certainly not

So I can certainly understand how someone might have that "value" bar lower than me and think it's not worth it. Some people just won't have the nostalgia goggles I have for games of that era, and fair enough. But the solution to that problem is to not buy it. Or at least grab the cheaper option and/or leach off a family plan. And in any case, I think it's fair to say that the people who are complaining that they want the VC service back are almost by definition not in this category. And that argument is the one I have no sympathy or understanding for

@OctoAmbush GameCube games would need you to buy a Gamecube controller since modern controllers are incompatible with GameCube games. Such as the shoulder triggers which are pressure sensitive.

@Bass_X0
Didn't stop them releasing Sunshine in 3D allstars. And the N64 having an odd controller didn't stop N64 games on NSO. And in any case, you can already use GC controllers on the Switch

Nothing really stopping GC as part of NSO. Just maybe not as a single app with a library of games due to the game sizes.....

@skywake
$100 a month for the cheapest service in the my area and it’s unreliable so I don’t even bother. I have a data plan I use on my phone but out in this rural area I have to stand at one spot very still to even send this. The Switch simply can’t grab on to my weak signal. I do go to where WiFi is in town over the weekends. However when I did try a sub for three months it would always want to check in when I’m at home even though I was connected earlier in the day. With losing the ability to play the games I wanted on nso every other week due to the check in required I may have had a month and a half I could actually play. Then let’s not get started with other life commitments like work and family which also cut into the time I could get to play them. So VC works out so much better for me and others. The main part of switch online is playing online. I don’t use that so just like I’m not anywhere near the ocean I’m not going to buy a sailing yacht switch online holds no value. Nintendo is going to make money even more so by adding an option to buy the games. Money from both subs and non subs with some crossover to boot.

@GameOtaku
To be brutally honest you are an extreme edge case. Also it doesn't need to phone in the next day it's just that it checks if the app is playable when you open it if you haven't opened it in a while. Not sure what that timeframe is, probably a month or something

But in any case, if you have a phone you have WiFi. Your problem is definitely resolvable. I don't think your scenario is Nintendo's issue or a reason to rage about their service

Edit: it's also kinda funny that you're here complaining to me, an Australian, about $100US/mo being expensive for internet......

@skywake
It checks every week to see if you have a subscription. Though I don’t know why Nintendo has it set that way. Last time my sub would’ve ended in the middle of the week so I thought since it already checked on Saturday it would let me play the nso games through till the next check in rolled around. It didn’t. It wanted to check again on the day it ended. A cell phone data plan in a rural area is crap just typing this I only have one bar and I have to save frequently and try repeatedly just to post like this.

Besides why tie an online sub to offline games? From what I’ve been told about the competitions offerings, mainly game pass, you can purchase the games on the service individually and not subscribe.

Seems reasonable to me. You can buy a subscription for a period as small as a week so it makes sense for the automated phone home to run on a weekly basis.

In terms of you trying to cheat the expiry? I'm not surprised you couldn't and frankly I'm happy that you can't cheat what being able to cheat it would say. As a developer I can tell you know if I was writing the check-in I would have it check as frequently as possible. Then save 7 days from now OR the date of expiry, whichever comes first. A date that would clear whenever you change the clock. If you ever try to play something that requires NSO and that date isn't after now? Force check again, refuse if you can't

But yeah, to my broader point, I don't think Nintendo should be blamed for or necessarily even cater to weak infrastructure. Especially when we're literally talking about downloadable content. If you want offline SNES/NES games buy one of those classic mini consoles