Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

I agree with @NEStalgia in that it would have made more sense to establish that expectation early on. Though I also see their logic in waiting until they had an actual library of games to play online. I just think they should have planned it way better, in the sense that they should have had a release schedule closer to launch that would have justified charging for online play right from the get go, rather than this awkward timing they've decided with. Especially since their "bonuses" that they're offering to go with it will hardly make up for the annoyance that many people are about to find themselves with when they see they've gotta pay to play the game they've been playing online for free for the past x amount of time.

@MisterPi The weird thing is they did have a game lineup to sell the online a year ago....and then inexplicably delayed the online. I commend them for waiting until it was ready but how badly could they have planned a paid hosted service that honestly doesn't do much of anything, if it ended up delayed a full year after they intended to do it which was already 3 months after the product it was supposed to launch with, which was in development for years?

@subpopz Anecdotally I've heard far more than I'd expect both here and on a Splatoon forum that aren't going to be paying for it, either because they just can't afford the money after scraping together pennies for the hardware (students largely.) or out of principle because they just don't play online enough to justify spending $20 more on it. The first group just wouldn't have bought a Switch to begin with maybe (or maybe not Splatoon.) The second group would have been easier to convince when they bought the hardware than imposing the fee spontaneously later. I do think it will thin the herd. Even the Splatoon devs have admitted that. And yes, f2p games will be an option there....which isn't going to help the player base of Splatoon to endure, but worse, Pokken, Blaz, DBZ, Doom, etc. XBox owners were internet gamers from the start....the internet features were a big selling point of the system (and it's predecessor the Dreamcast.) It was an easy push on them. PS4 owners weren't, but a lot of PS4 buyers were XBox defectors fleeing the impending disaster of One (Sony commented that the majority of first month PS4 sales were former XBox owners not PS3 up-graders.) Nintendo just doesn't have that built-in online audience outside the Smash core and newly formed Splatoon core. It's a harder sell for them from the start, but..."new console, pay the price" flies. Even Sony would have hit harsher backlash had they done it in Spring 2015.

I'm not saying it's going to destroy the Switch, but I'm saying it's a significant speedbump that will be felt by players and those responsible for maintaining online portions of games.

Shovel Knight Treasure Trove physical version is all on the cart:

As for the online, it really depends on how Nintendo actually promotes it. Based on what Nintendo has done so far, what I see is most Switch users turn on their Switch go to play an online game like Splatoon 2 and find out they can't play anymore. Rather than paying for the subscription, they do something else like play Fortnite instead.

Maybe when we enter September Nintendo will actually do something but by now I would've expected the following:

• All 20 NES games announced
• Cloud saves detailed (as in the process, different consoles handle it differently)
• The kind of discounts provided
• Announced something big happening around launch (e.g. new mode for Splatoon 2, new tracks for MK8 Deluxe)

But Nintendo has been very vague about the online service.

@subpopz Agreed, but my interperetation in this case is the opposite. The people on an internet forum like this are the loyalists, apologists, and people who already accept spending a significant portion of their time and money on video games and Nintendo specifically. I.E. the people here are much more likely than the average consumer to justify the costs even if they can't afford it or won't use it much. Thus my interpretation that if I'm noticing a higher than expected (but not terribly huge) number here and other Nintendo forums.....what must the actual mainstream casual market look like?

@Grumblevolcano I'm with Gruble on this, I see that scenario of loading the game and getting an error that you have to pay to play now, and people going onto something else. This is especially true with the launch now coinciding with the #1 and #1 online game in the world being A) on the platform and B) Not requiring payment. A new game, for free, and not needing to pay will be enticing to many after being surprised by the pay wall splash. And it's a game they've all heard their friends talk about.

Release it with 70%+ off every major online game for members only.....that might push people over the edge, 1 week only.

Well I mean if you can't fit shovel knight on a cart, your storage medium is in serious trouble...

Yeh that's a good idea, but I wouldn't limit it to online games, and I'd extend the offer to nearer a month. It will get loads of positive word of mouth/keyboard, and many people will be nudged into dropping some money on a game they might otherwise not have bought. It was the buy one, get one free deal with Mario Kart 8 on Wii U that launched my last 4 years of crazy spending. Without that deal I may have never bought my favourite game of all time, which made me fall back in love with gaming, so I may never have made gaming the massive part of my life that it is now.

As loss leaders go, that one by Nintendo was super effective, on me at least.

Awesome news about the Langrisser Remake. It will feature original artwork and music as a 'classic mode'. Man, I hope it comes West.

Remember, Nintendo almost never give anything above what they have announced. So a conservative guess is the best.

If I would venture a guess, the NES game will be the same as in the NES classic mini minus third party. Changing max 2. Those are the games people want the most after all.

The discounts might very well be the same they do at your birthday, i.e 20% off a game you own. I don't expect any third party deals, except some Indies.

And they don't have any big coming for existing games.

And quite frankly, the save will be explained ad nauseum by fan sites. I don't think Nintendo will even bother with any big in depth showcasing.

And the killer feature is paying to play online. But most will swear they bought it for the other stuff.

@Therad I'm just expecting paid online. Everyone else does it. But Sony and Microsoft seem to have a low enough average attach rate to make forcing a game rental service on to folk shrewd business.

Data miners have apparently unearthed some possible details about the next Switch update 6.0. I am interested as to what that classic controller icon means.

This is just common sense really. But I have seen people arguing it will have SNES, 64, gamecube and even Wii games. Or voice chat directly in the switch. And a bunch of other things. Nintendo usually doesn't over achieve, so what you see are what you get.

I'll be slightly amazed if Gamecube titles don't turn up sooner or later. And Wii. If they expect NSO to achieve long term growth, it's got to happen.

@gcunit I highly doubt the growth of their online service would hinge on decades old games.

And that's one of my issues with paid online. It's not even about the online anymore, it's all about the ''free'' games

I meant of those we don't know of.

It is not impossible there will be more than NES games, it would be easy for them to do that. But it isn't a certainty and even if they do Nintendo can sometimes be incredibly dense and/or slow.

@Octane Why did you pay for the service? Why, for the free games, of course!"

@Therad No, seriously, I'm buying for cloud saves which is the same reason I paid for PSN for years before the current year when I started getting the freebies and sales. I'm probably one of the few though

Galaxy brain: finding 7 other friends to share the family plan so you only pay $4.37 per year :^]

I can literally trip over my sidewalk across a year and find enough pennies to pay for that.

Travis Strikes Again confirmed for January 18th

Jesus, there's gonna be soooooo many games to buy in January. I should probably start saving now

I'll pass, as I've never played this series before.