Topic: The Nintendo Switch Online Subscription Service Thread

@SKTTR I don't know how much you pay for your individual subscription, but I'm confident my share of a family plan subscription with 5 other people (currently, potentially 7 with full uptake) is less. We each pay £5 per year. I've made up the shortfall when the numbers are down, but I've still paid less this way than if I had just gone for an individual sub.

Interesting point of view.
Nice if this works out well for you.
Do you buy multiple of the same game as well so everyone can have their own?

Neat. A bit of work but each to their own. Personally, I don't feel it's a safe environment if someone else is managing the online stuff I paid for.

On my plan I have myself, my sister, my niece and my niece's partner. We all live in different houses, we all have our own Switch.

I also share other accounts amongst family so NSO is no different. I pay for NSO and Disney+, I don't pay for Netflix, Spotify or Kayo (sports)

I'm already paying the full $35 a year for most of the members of my family plan. All things considered what's $35 a year, right? For me, sure that's fine. But blowing it up to $80, I mean c'mon man! I wouldn't mind if at least some of the members would chip in but if you look at the individual plan....uggh. Not being a cheapskate but if that's the price I would like to see more than what is being offered. Sure it's not easy nor cheap to "re-develop/emulate" these retro games or even get their licenses but I can't really rely on nostalgia this time to justify the price.

If only they would somehow assure us that it's NOT ONLY the Animal Crossing DLC and there are more free DLC to come via this new pack then I might rethink it. But right now I'd rather not play N64 or Genesis games on Switch.

@Zyph if you have other adults in your group, simply propose to them that to upgrade, you’d need them to contribute the extra money. You keep paying the base service as usual, and let them choose if they want to upgrade.

@Eel 2 of them are working adults and the 5 are my brother's kids. Yeah, that's what I'm doing right now. Since the 2 are kinda leeching off of me on the subscription for 3 years now I guess the time to collect is due 🤣 That includes making my brother pay up for his kids' sub 😂

@Xyphon22 I hear you. I'm massively excited for N64 NSO as I haven't played most of these games since the 90s and many of them that are coming I've never played at all (Paper Mario, Kirby 64, Sin and Punishment, Dr Mario 64, Pokemon Snap) I don't intend to play these games for years on end as I'll be playing newer games, but for now I'm gonna get so much out of this service that I won't even buy any other Switch games for the rest of the year. For me it's great and I'm especially excited to play Yoshi's Story on the move! Think it will be great in handheld just like Yoshi's Island GBA.

Also the existing Mega Drive Collection on Switch is pretty bad thanks to button input lag, dead online and a horrible menu system that makes it so tedious just to change your games. Personally will play the Mega Drive a lot more through NSO and again have never played games like Musha, Ecco The Dolphin and Gunstar Heroes.

Add in the NES/SNES games, online play on regular Switch games, plus the Animal Crossing DLC and I really don't think it's bad value for money for the price of a cup of coffee a month. There are legitimate criticisms like lack of proper voice chat and integrated invite system etc, plus I get why some gamers who want to keep the games forever preferred the virtual console system, but really don't think it's bad value for money whatsoever. As I said, it's about the same price as a cup of coffee a month, come on now...

If the argument is "but you can emulate them for free" That's a bit like saying "Why should I have to pay for my groceries when I can just steal them for free?"

I’m going to repost what I posted here a couple of weeks ago, as I didn’t get many responses back.

Another question, that I have thought since that post is:
1. If I end up getting the Individual Member for the NSO Expansion Pack, will other users on the same Switch have access to the New Horizons HHP DLC, or would I need to buy the Family Membership for all of them to access it? 🤔

@GameOtaku Actually, I find the NSO to be cheap. I used to often pay over $50 a year every year for Virtual Console games on Wii and Wii U back in the day. I only stopped when they stopped releasing VC games.

It depends on how much of what's being offered is of value to you. For some it'll seem a good deal, for others, it'll seem overpriced.

Personally, I think it's too high. I'm not sure I'd pay the individual membership if it was my only option. Probably just stick with base membership for online and cloud saves and NES/SNES.

Thankfully, they gave us an out with the family plan, which is an outrageously good deal. I joined @Eel who was running a family plan group, and within days we'd recruited enough ppl to max out at 8. So my cut is $10 per yr (technically $12 since he's in Mexico and the conversion rate from USD is slightly unfavorable) but ya. I couldn't be happier. I'm paying half the price I was paying before, and getting twice the value in return.

Hopefully they won’t take too long to enable the plan upgrade option. I’d love to be able to download the N64 app before leaving the hotel in the morning.

It stinks, I really want to play some OoT again, and on switch. But, not at the price. I have a family plan with My daughter, but im not going do the family plan and fork out that cash.

@Bass_X0
But not everyone plays online. Why lock them behind a paywall when you aren’t going to use the service? Besides picking and choosing your own library of games sounds far better than relying on a third party to pick for you.

The most expensive option available, paying for a family plan entirely by yourself, is less than 22 cents per day. I think people are going a little overboard on how expensive this is simply because they predicted it would be cheaper.

I don't think it's so much about whether the price is affordable as what you're getting for it. Nintendo have around a dozen legacy systems that the Switch could presumably emulate with hundreds of games between them - even if you just count first party ones that should have no licensing issues - but they're only dribbling them out at a meagre rate.

Compared to what you can have for a not dissimilar fee with Sony and Microsoft's online and subscription services, it seems a rather thin offering. While I'll be subscribing, because it hits the spot to me, I can still appreciate why there's been so much pushback on it.

That's not to say that Nintendo necessarily have to be competitive against them. They exist in their own weird bubble outside the rest of the mainstream games industry so can pretty much do their own thing. Just for once though, I'd like to see them embrace the bigger picture on this.

Judging by the maintenance schedule, it seems NSO Expansion Pack will go live in around 17 hours from now.

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/netinfo/en_GB/index.html

Then spend your money on the Wii VC instead. If you think that's a better value it still exists. I remember the thread years ago where you kept going on and on and on about SNES games being "locked" behind the New 3DS. Franky I don't have much sympathy for your stance

TBH, kinda tired of the NSO "value" whine coming from some circles. But at this stage I think Nintendo should probably just fold to the whine. Just make individual N64 games available for purchase. Purely because the "I want to own it", "I want to curate my library" and "I don't want it locked behind NSO" crowds are apparently more than happy to spend more on games one at a time. So let Nintendo extract money out of the suckers who for whatever reason think the VC was better value

@NintendoByNature I have 2 spaces in the family group I've been running since NSO inception. Happy to add your two accounts for £10 each if you'd like.

@Ninjalaislit Can't answer your two original questions, but to your latest question, if you buy the DLC separately then it will work like any other software on your Switch when it comes to sharing it with others, but if are using the NSO membership expansion to access the DLC then only those users accounts that are signed up to the NSO expansion will be able to access it.

Boom. Look at that. Deals falling out of the sky into peoples’ laps lol.