Topic: The Nintendo Switch Online Subscription Service Thread

If you factor in the DLC, it's only an additional $20 for the family plan, which is about what I expected. After the first year, though, it's either $45 or you're paying $25 per year for the DLC rather than once. So hopefully by then they will have added more stuff to make it worthwhile, but at least the first year seems good (if you want the DLC, which we do).

Here’s some math: the original NSO is $20US for a single user for a year, the expansion pass is $50US a year. So $30 more. People wanted it to be $10 BEFORE it was announced AC would be included, which costs $25. So, if we be realistic and say you most likely wouldn’t play the AC DLC for more than a year, if you only bought the Expansion Pack for one year, the AC adds $20 to the price, saving you $5 assuming you use the DLC for the whole year, which is unlikely. So yeah, it’s a bit of a ripoff, especially if you don’t have ACNH to begin with.

I honestly hate this pricing SO MUCH, because I don’t plan on buying the Expansion Pass until Majora’s Mask is added, whenever that would be. But if I buy the AC DLC before then, I would be paying $30 for a few N64 games, only for a year. I would be REBUYING the DLC even though I already have it, WHICH IS SOO STUPID. They should have an in between tier that just has N64 and Genesis games, because this sucks.

To be fair, if you have a family pass, and split the price between 8 people who all get the content (just under $4 each), it’s still an amazing deal.

Have they said how much it will cost for a single month, or can you only buy it for a year? All the prices I’ve seen online have been for a year.

@Xyphon22 It's already confirmed the only way to permanently get the DLC is to buy it outright. Via the subscription you lose access when your subscription elapses.

@Eel I also thought that it might add DLC later, because if this was all, it would only be worth it for people who like ACNH. For some reason, the first game that came to my mind was WarioWare. That seems like a game that could have DLC, and this Expansion Pack would be a cool place to put it.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about for a while (I may have already said it here but I don’t think I did) is that they might have exclusive Game Trials. Like, maybe first-party games could have a Game Trial only for those with an Expansion Pack, or the same Game Trials as normal, but they are two weeks long or something like that. There’s of course also the chance they’ll just move all Game Trials exclusively to it and not have any for normal subscribers, but I’ll stay optimistic.

Wow. ......so overpriced. I think the NSO expansion pricing may hurt Nintendo's stock. (edit: didn't do much of anything.)

I'm skipping the nso expansion at that price.

@Grumblevolcano I know. I was just saying that it's a good price for the first year at least. After that it is pretty bad unless they add more stuff.

@WoomyNNYes Same. Right now, I pay the $20/year plan just to play with friends online who don't play PC games and a couple of NES and SNES games. $50/year is too much considering I already have Sega Genesis Classics on Switch, which has all the Genesis games that interests me (to add insult, it does have online play too).

Besides, if I want the Animal Crossing DLC, I'll just buy it alone. I feel bad it's being bundled since people who just want the N64 and Genesis games, have to still pay $50 for DLC they probably won't use or don't have the game for.

Is Sonic 3 going to come to Genesis Online?

I'm sorry but thats asking waaaaay to much money, I mean dude, PS plus gives me twice of that for that price, And Xbox will even give me new games, Nintendo, Nintendo, Nintendo, giving us the finger as always.

I really want to play paper mario, so idk.

You know what, I think I will just stick with the emulated version of paper mario, I least I can play it that way.

@dionysos283 Aim high, and lower the price later, get good press, profit?

That new subscription price is bonkers. It should come with a complimentary tub of Vaseline because really, they're just screwing you imo.

I just read an article (sorry I don't have a link, it was just one that my phone sent me) in which Emily Rogers says the price is almost assuredly due to licensing issues. Apparently, Sega is making a lot of money from this because they were mad at how little they made from the Wii VC, and that is why they did not support the VC on Wii U at all. And if they had to pay Sega so much money, imagine what they had to pay Microsoft to get Rare games.

@Xyphon22 Ya I'm sorry but no, Even if that was the case Nintendo should have just dropped Sega from the deal if it was that high, Nintendo is just being greedy.

@Xyphon22 I read about that on LRG's Discord this morning. I wonder how true it is. If it is true, I'd rather they went with TurboGrafx16 instead.

@Pokester99 Yes!

I think the real reason is because Microsoft (and later Sony) made it acceptable in the first place.

• DS/Wii - Free online though so was PS3 (the only one with paid online was Microsoft with Xbox/Xbox 360)
• 3DS/Wii U - Free online though so was PS3 (see above, 3DS and Wii U came out before PS4 and XB1 were announced)
• Switch - Free online initially because Wii U flopped but became gradually more expensive as the Switch became a gigantic success. PS4, XB1, PS5 and Series X|S all have paid online at $60 a year.

They ain'tz gittin my monies!!

Nintendo: Add GBA, GBC, many more N64 games, maybe Mother 3 and some other impossible to find games and then I will justify the price for myself and dip my foot in. In Australia this is a hell of a lot of money that I'm not willing to spend at the moment. I was lucky enough to have a stable full-time job during the rough past 2 years but a lot of people lost theirs (yes I'm in Melbourne, the world's most locked down city, still in lockdown lmao) and I can't imagine anybody looking at this kind of price and thinking it's reasonable in any way shape or form.

Yes, if you divide it into months then it doesn't look all that bad, but why can't we then get a monthly option? Also, the inclusion of the DLC boggles my mind. I don't understand why we can't dispose of all that and make it $15-20 a year instead.

I don't act entitled ever, because Nintendo doesn't owe me anything. Video games are a luxury but there are many other things to be spending hard-earned money on and this ain't it. I'll re-think this when they make a better deal. In its current state, this is bad.

Honestly I think everyone's maths is off here. Really this is pretty damn good value if you want the DLC and pretty bad value if you don't. And in terms of the length of time you're going to play it, if you're not going to be playing it for more than a year that just means you're not locked into the expansion. There's no other honest way to slice it

Lets look at this objectively. This DLC? It's pretty substantial, it could have easily been a full standalone release. They could've charged $60-70AU for it and would've been pretty bussiness as usual. I know for a fact that at least one person on my family plan would've brought it at that price. The family plan for NSO is only $55AU more, it's already better value than this scenario would've been for the first year

But it's not a full retail game, it's a $37AU paid DLC expanson. So this moves the needle a tad. If you are on an individual membership you're paying an additional $30/year for the expansion. A year of the expansion is justified to get access to the DLC. For a family membership? You have to have two people on your plan who would be in for the DLC and then it's worth it for the first year

Beyond the first year? IF nothing more is added that people in my family group are interested in it becomes a pretty poor value very fast. As you said it's unlikely people will be playing this DLC a year from now which, rationally, is part of what makes the expansion a better value for this year. But because of that there will need to be more content of that value or greater added before people loose interest in this DLC

So that's where I'm at. This is a pretty damn good value for me but only conditionally. If Nintendo add something of the value of the Animal Crossing DLC once a year? It'll just barely struggle to maintain that level of value and I'll probably drop back down the cheaper tier at the end of the year. If we get something reasonably significant monthly? Then it's a pretty good value service. TBH I'm expecting something in the middle.

I think we have to look a bit beyond just what's on the table now if we're assessing long term value. And this is just speculation at this point. But given this DLC? I think it's fairly safe to say retrospectively that if this was there from day 1 it probably would've included stuff like the Smash Bros DLC. If it was on the Wii U it probably would've included stuff like NES Remix and Wii Sports Club. If this is the tier of stuff this service includes and they maintain that level of content? I'm ok with the price