And how are you going to organize this protest @Kinoen, a forum which most Switch owners don't use? Also, which metric are you going to use for "it's serviceable"?
Also, why are you using the 360 as your metric for "what things should be" rather then the original Xbox? Which, by the way, was charging you for the ability to access online features. The 360 added voice chat, which Nintendo has (in a weird method, granted). But for most of the 360's life you were paying for online multiplayer only, with voice chat being a fringe benefit. No free games, no special members only discounts, nothing beyond online multiplayer with voice chat being the fringe benefit. For this you were expected to pay $15 a month, or you could get a multi-month subscription for a discounted (up to 40% off per month) price.
If that is your metric, then feel free to subscribe because Switch Online Service already surpasses it. Or do you mean what XBL evolved into by the end of the 360's life as Microsoft moved further and further towards making their consoles media centers instead of dedicated game consoles?
In my experience
Rocket league the best and quick games online within seconds
Fortnite is great online
Paladin great online
Mario kart 8 great online
Splatoon 2 great online
Mario tennis ace great online
Arms use to be good but now empty
Super bomberman r is near dead online
Street fighter collection is laggy experience
We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
I fail to understand why people are assuming the online service will suddenly get worse just because the rest of the features are rolled out and it becomes a paid service. If anything, it's more likely the service will be improved over time because it's a paid service so they can devote some people to improving it.
Do people actually believe that Nintendo is just going to slap a price tag on online multiplayer then never work to improve the online service?
Will everyone that plays online now continue playing after the sub starts? Less people makes it harder for the matchmaking to find matching opponents. Ergo, the service becomes worse. It is simple mathematics. It won't be that bad for the bigger games, but the smaller games will die off faster.
I also don't think the multiplayer part will improve just because they get money. For one, any game not developed by Nintendo won't see a dime. And as long as Nintendo are using people's switches as servers, connections will never become as stable as it could be.
@1UP_MARIO
When the online service goes live, not now
@FaeKnight
I don't plan to organize anything, majority of the people (least from what I've seen) seem to agree that Nintendo's online service is a dung-heap and will most likely not be getting it, so there will be a drop in players for online games.
Aye, the 360 was bad with it's online service when it first came out, however it still had more than the Switch does now. I can send messages, make parties/chats, friend people, voice chat for every game, the online was overall good, achievements to unlock (this one is a preference), cloud saving is free (Gold not needed) etc...Is Nintendo doing any of this with it's service now?
Note: I used the 360 AND PS3 as my "metric".
@Kinoen well I agree the PS3 did a lot lot more. Even the PlayStation mobile app was great and you could message people directly from the app and see who’s online from the app.
Even the online games is healthy on PS3
The majority of people who are browsing this forum, you mean. And that "majority" appears to consist of 5 to 10 different people who are quite vocal about how 'inferior' it is without any explanation of how the base service of "play games online" is in any way inferior to the competitors base service of "play games online". Most of the rest of us are saying Well, it's not quite what I was hoping for, and I'm disappointed in how voice chat is done, but it's cheep so I'll probably spring for a 12 month sub."
Others are saying they'll sub because of the NES games, and to be honest that's my main reason too. The fact the occasional Mario Kart race online is fun and I find Splatoon's online multiplayer to be a blast (or is that a splat?) is icing on the cake to me.
@1UP_MARIO
Right? And the app is a side-service while it's Nintendo's main service.
@FaeKnight
I was more referring to the internet as a whole rather than just this forum. YouTube for example, I cannot find a video saying anything good about Nintendo's online service and that's because there is nothing good about it.
As for the explanation why Nintendo's online service is terrible, hopefully I gave an adequate one.
Oh yes, the famed youtube videos that express the view of one specific person, not the masses who didn't make the video... You know, it's kind of funny you mention those videos. Doing a search for them, I'm only finding 50 videos even similar to that view. Funny thing is that they are mostly a year old. There's ONE review that's 2 days old, and that's him talking about the Direct section. Which nobody is disagreeing about being disappointing due to lack of giving any real information.
But here's the thing, 50 videos does not a majority make. And something else to keep in mind is that people will pay the subscription fee so they can play online. I don't think that there will be a dramatic drop in online players because nobody is willing to pay. There will be people who decide it's not worth it, there will be people who refuse in protest, but I don't think it's going to be as dramatic as people like you impy @Kinoen
Honestly, why is $20 a year such a big deal for everyone? That's less than $2 a month. Even kids with very little allowance lose $2 a month in the couch or spend it on bubble gum. And Nintendo has been not charging for services that they should've been charging for for years.
And with the added features that this $20 a year provides, it's completely worth it. Geez, almost everyone I know that has a Switch has wanted one or more of these games that we are getting with this $20 service. Now they are included. Don't have to pay $5 per game, you get access to all of them.
Then you have the cloud saves. Back on the PS3 when you didn't need PS+ to play games online, I still paid the $50 a year primarily for the cloud saves. I've heard of several stories of people having something go wrong with their Switch and even if it was covered under warranty, they lost EVERYTHING. Man, I have somewhere in the 150-200 hour range into Breath of the Wild along with many hours into several other games. How horrible would it be to lose that if you plan on going back to the game!?!
And again, only $20 a year. PlayStation and XBOX are charging $60 a year for a similar service! And they don't have the NES Classic library that I really want to pay.
But I think only a small percentage of people who are already active won't be paying for the service. People complained when the PS4 came out and started to require you to pay for online service. And then when they upped it from $50 to $60 a year I saw a lot of "I'm out" comments, even though the direct competitor was charging the same. Yet everyone just went along with it.
@FaeKnight
Those videos do express the viewpoint of a single person, but the comments express all those who view the content and I'm finding the majority all agreeing that the service, currently, is terrible.
I'm not purposely looking for videos that I agree with, I just typed in "Nintendo's Online Service" and the first few videos I find all bad mouth the service and are under two weeks old. Heck, I just looked up on Nintendo's official channel on it's online service and its got 6.1k likes to 17k dislikes.
People will pay for the service, that is a given. I mean, people paid for the X-box 360 service at launch. Who knows for sure the drop in players numerically, but we can agree that there will be a drop. I might be dramatic in my assessment, but thats because of how utterly bad this service looks to me, like I cannot comprehend why anyone would pay for it, but I've been wrong and disappointed before.
@MilkBone
(2nd paragraph) What games, the NES ones? The 20ish a month that you lose the following month?
Mhmm, it would be terrible to lose your save data, while you need PS+ for cloud saving, it works on all games. This is not the case for Nintendo's service which only covers a select few. (X-box has free cloud saving without the need of Gold)
Example: X-box Gold at launch had; sending messages, making parties/chats, friending people, voice chat for every game, the online was overall good, achievements to unlock (this one is a preference), cloud saving is free (Gold not needed) etc...Now we have free games to keep forever every month and deals on the store. Nintendo isn't making a similar service, they are making a worse service (IMO).
@Kinoen
Yeah, the NES games. I guess I don't understand your comment about 20ish a month that you lose the following month? Are you saying that you only get to play those games for a month? If so, that's wrong. It is a library that keeps on growing. They even mentioned that in their direct. The month after that they're adding 2-3 games along with the month after that. That's just what they announced so far for the next couple of months.
And you talk about all these features that XBOX Gold has (or also PS+ has similar) and the service for Nintendo Switch online is worse. Well duh, of course it is. But that service is also $20 a year compared to $60 a year. It's three times the amount, so I would expect at LEAST three times the amount of services.
@MilkBone
Hmm, looks like you are right, my bad. I missed that part of the Direct (I actually missed most of it).
PlayStation was virtually the same as Gold, but was free when it launched, only swapping to a paid model with the PS4, which they added those free games a month. I'm not asking for a lot from Nintendo, just the basics, which they are not doing. I also feel they are holding back, since Fortnite has voice-chat, without a phone, on Switch. They might even being doing NES games instead of something like GameCube or more up to date console games, because since they are all digital, it takes up the least amount of memory, which Nintendo consoles are pretty bad with having (but its good enough if you get physical copies, since Nintendo is the only company that doesn't force you to download games onto your hard-drive). I could be wrong on this and the actual reason is Nintendo still values their GameCube games at full price, so they would never give it up for "free" xP.
@skywake
That varies, but regardless, should we just tune out those who complain? Look what happened recently with gaming because we complained enough, EA was forced to take out loot-boxes in Star Wars BF2. Loot-boxes are also now illegal in Belgium and are being investigated in Finland. Complaining has merit, so long as their substance behind it.
I don't understand why people are defending this so hard. It is a greedy bad practice regardless of who is doing it.
Locking something that in most cases doesn't cost them a dime behind a paywall is pure greed. And they can do it because they have a local monopoly.
Do you think Apple or Google could do something like this and get away with it? I don't think so. And they have devices that are very similar in philosophy.
I am actually not sure if this is really legal, it is definitely a grey area. They are abusing their market dominance.
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