Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@FaeKnight I'd say it's the other way around. It doesn't cost Sony or MS $60 per year per user to keep the servers up and running, that's ridiculous. The actual costs would be a fraction of that, a very tiny fraction. Not even worth charging for. You are paying for the ''free'' games and the discounts. Online play is just being held ransom behind a paywall to entice more people to pay for it.

The ''free'' games that Sony and Microsoft offer each month is what constitutes to most of the costs of the sub, not the servers. That's why I've always argued it should be free, because it surely shouldn't be $60 a year to play online. Plus, this ''service'' is making them billions each year in revenue. I don't know how big the profits are, but the $60 per user certainly isn't necessary to ''maintain their servers''.

Then there's Nintendo. People have used the same argument; ''we have to pay for their servers''. Well, they don't really use dedicated servers in the first place, so you're paying for nothing in that regard. But as a result this also leads to games not being included in the cloud safe feature, a feature that still doesn't have an alternative. Surely there are NES games, but what else is there? What else are you actually paying for?

All those online subs are load of rubbish IMO!

Remember @Octane, "free games" wasn't even part of the service for quite some time with either Microsoft or Sony. It was just voice chat and "play games online". Microsoft also backpeddled on netflix, Hulu, and Youtube being gated behind Gold membership. Actually, they had to backpeddle regarding games that have their own subscription service and that are only online being gated by Gold membership too.

Also, I never once claimed you're paying for the servers to exist. Servers (or a lack of them) tend to be the game publisher's responsibility, not the console manufacturer. You are, in fact, paying for the ability to go online for a multiplayer session. The other stuff is extras other companies tacked on later. The argument I have used is that Nintendo is just following what their competitors are doing. As such if people are so offended now by having to pay a fee to play online multiplayer, they should have voted with their wallets back when Microsoft first introduced Xbox Live and decided to charge for playing games online.

At this point in time, the public has voted with their wallets. And the decision was overwhelming, people will pay a fee to access online multiplayer on their console, but not to access video streaming. Especially if they are already paying a monthly fee for the streaming service it's self. And the console gaming industry has taken that to heart.

@FaeKnight Pretty much, Nintendo is following Sony/Microsoft but is 7-13 years behind dependent on what aspects of the online you're looking at. There's backlash for it being paid, that happened when PS4 online was announced to be paid too but the bigger backlash as far as I can tell is that Nintendo Switch Online is pathetic compared to modern day Xbox Live and PSN.

Yeah, the "Instant Game Collection" thing feels to me like a bad joke. You get a set of 8 (I think) games which you can play as long as you maintain your PS+ membership, but those games can and will change regularly. At least with Microsoft's Games with Gold you can chose if you want the offered games or not, and if you decide you do the game is yours free and clear. The NES part of Nintendo Online sounds closer to what Sony does with it's Instant Games Collection, only without the ever changing small list of games you can play. Instead Nintendo says they will be adding new games to the list over time.

Not to mention Xbox and Playstation have dang few games I'd even want to go online with. While even with my (admittedly small) collection of Switch games I have games I am willing to go online with. And will be adding more. Monster Hunter Generations, Super Mario Party, Mario Kart, Uno, Civ VI... Okay, maybe I'll get more use out of the online service then I initially thought.

What do analysts call the average number of games owned by a console owner? (I always forget the word) With Xbox it's like 6! Sony is similar I think. A subscription service gets more money out of more people that otherwise would not have purchased a game. Now when BotW had more copies sold than consoles lol! And software sales outselling other formats combined in some instances, how on Earth does a company turn that into a subscription service without charging well over 200 quid a year!?!

Uhm, where are you getting a number of games analysts say gamers own for a given console? Cause I can't find any statistics like that anywhere.

EDIT: The only thing I could find was a single survey, in which out of a sample size of 886 people...
200 people said they have between 0 and 49 games
127 people said they have between 50 and 99 games
299 people said they have between 100 and 249 games
145 people said they have between 250 and 499 games
57 people said they have between 500 and 999 games
58 people said they have 1000+ games

@FaeKnight Ha! Attachment rate

@ReaderRagfish And you can literally see those games in the UK charts.

@GrailUK It's probably somewhere between 8 and 12 games sold per console, in line with most other (popular) consoles. But that means that every gamer who has a relatively small library of 50 games, there are 4 or 5 people who only own 1 or 2 games.

Also, BOTW never outsold the Switch, those numbers were shipped, not sold though customers. Nintendo simply manufactured more copies of BOTW than consoles

Yeah that's why I say the average consumer doesn't give a crap about 2018 being a bit light. Because the average comsumer doesn't buy that many games to begin with.

Besides, and I will repeat this over and over, people have a tendancy of just buying games but never play them. Honestly it's their own fault for doing that and then whining "I have no games to play".

@Octane Thankyou Captain Pedantic. My point still stands Most folk owning a console own GTAV, or FIFA, or Mario Kart (In Japan it looks like Splatoon). You can see this in UK charts. They tend to do other stuff than play video games. Probably like football, so have a PS4 because it can play football. They certainly don't hang around on PushSquare talking about games. But Sony and Microsoft are getting them to spend extra cash with their subscription service. They are still charging for online but shoved a game rental service down folks throats to squeeze em further!)

I'm glad Nintendo aren't doing this practice. The NES games are a lovely added value to a basic service and the cloud saves are welcome - but I reckon it's more the fact they would lose money with such a high attach rate than they are super nice folk.

I certainly don't claim to be right, and happy to be proven wrong.

I personally have...
35 PS2 games
28 PS1 games
134 digital xbox 360 games (spread between the 360 and xb1)
68 physical xbox 360 games
129 digital Xbox One games
8 physical Xbox One games (one of which contains 6 XB360 games as part of it the bundle)
4 Gamecube games
10 digital Switch games
1 physical Switch game
1 physical Switch game pre-ordered that will be delivered in October

O.o Didn't realize I had quite that many games. I thought my collection was closer to 200 games, not over 400.

EDIT: Mind you, for those 360 games that are backwards compatable with the XB1 I don't keep them all installed at any given moment. Or every XB1 game for that matter. No where near enough hard drive space for that.

EDIT 2: Most of the digital XB1 and 360 games I have thanks to Games with Gold as well, and a good number of them I tried because it was free then uninstalled due to not liking it.

EDIT 3: And that's not including my GBA, 3DS, and PS Vita game collections.

@GrailUK Most people in the UK have Crash

@ReaderRagfish I mean, there are plenty of people on these forums that own more than 50 games per console, hence the ''relatively small''. I don't think I buy more than 40, maybe if you include digital games, and I don't see myself as a huge collector, nor do I play video games every single day.

@GrailUK Well, I never disagreed with your point. Though we've seen price hikes for the other subs, and people are already demanding ''more than just NES games''. So I wouldn't be surprised if it's $30 with SNES games a year or two from now, or maybe $40 and N64 games too, etc. That's why I'm in favour of splitting the service in offering the features separately. Instead of $60 a year, why not $5 for the online, if they really want to charge for a couple of P2P games, $40 for the monthly games, $10 for the discounts, and $5 for the cloud saves or something like that.

@ReaderRagfish I know, but that goes to show that for every gamer with a huge collection, there are dozens of gamers who only own a handful of games.

Then again, those of us who do visit the official forums for a console also are likely the ones spending far too much money on games every year for said consoles.

@FaeKnight I can certainly attest to that sentiment! lol.

@FaeKnight sony’s subscription started out as a free game only sub, they added paid online this gen.

@darkswabber And people voted with their wallets to support that move yet again. Which Nintendo obviously took note of. I bet if nobody subscribed to PSN+ in protest of it turning into a paid service, that idea would have been scrapped. Just as if people had refused to pay Microsoft for the privilege of online multiplayer, the idea of charging for it would have been scrapped.

EDIT: By now paid online multiplayer on consoles is an industry standard. And it became that way because the public allowed it to happen. Kind of too late now. Especially since there's no way you'll be able to convince everyone (even those who never heard of this forum) to not pay for Nintendo Online. I'll do so for access to the NES (and hopefully SNES) games, with online multiplayer being a perk to me. Others will pay for multiplayer, with the games being a perk.

There wasn't really any backlash when Sony added a paywall to online.

Everyone was in "butterflies and puppies" land due to Sony saying games could be shared. And they basically got a free pass as a result. Anyone speaking out against it was immediately shut down by the masses of Sony gamers.

And I was ticked off, too. Cause $50-60 x 8 year generations is $400-500 just to play online. Im not nearly as ticked off with Switch because, well, its only $20/yr, which even for an 8-year lifespan is $150 range, and by this point it's already standardized across the industry. It was unavoidable.

Idk. Still not happy about it but, if it means cloud saves for most my games, I'll tolerate it.