Nintendo had the right idea regarding voice chat given the vast majority of games nowadays either block voice chat or default the ability to even hear voice chat to off.
@Rambler
Doubt it. Messaging and voice chat can very easily be limited to friends.
Nonetheless kids are foolish enough to friend anyone they talk to on the internet, and with that comes potential predators. The Swapnote incident spooked them. They immediately pulled the app, which speaks volumes about their sensitivity to such matters.
Psalms 22:16 (1,000 yrs before Christ)
They pierced My hands and feet
Isaiah 53:5 (700 yrs before Christ)
He was pierced for our transgressions
You hit the nail on the head as usual. Yes there are a fair amount of people not subscribed to NSO or even boycotting it, but the problem is that number pales in comparison to the overwhelming amount of people subscribing in their place. If I were to unsubscribe from my family plan right now multiple people would've already taken my place.
The success of NSO gives Nintendo no incentive to improve the service and to their eyes probably they probably don't care. Going on twitter and replying to Nintendo's account with complaints isn't helping anyone if anything it's probably giving their social media manager anxiety.
But that doesn't mean that criticism isn't warranted though and they're are still ways to reach Nintendo it's just like you said, they're incredibly stubborn.
And lastly while I would put most of the blame on Nintendo for providing a mediocre online service, the fans are still partially at fault for enabling it by buying it, which I don't blame them since paying is the only way to play online and get cloud saves, but from an objective standpoint we're still technically enabling these anti consumer practices. It would take too significant of an amount of people to unsubscribe from NSO for things to really change, so the NSO is probably going to stay the same.
I would imagine that the lack of chat is due to the big N not wanting a load of chinless wonders screaming homophobic / mysoginistic abuse at other users while playing.
This is a very specific example that can easily be worked around, for starters for most if not all games that include voice chat, the option is usually turned off. And also you could easily implement parental controls onto voice chat if thats such a concern.
That said, many ppl are perfectly OK with things as they are because they have no need or desire to use the features we're discussing.
I pretty much fall into this category to be honest. I don't like having to pay for online and cloud saves and having retro games tied to a subscription rather than being able to buy them, but I do want to have access to those things and NSO is so cheap that I'm okay with subscribing to it. More features would be nice but I have no need for voice chat or messaging personally. And even if you don't have a family plan, the annual cost for the standard price tier works out at £1.50 a month, and I have to admit that's pretty good value just for the S/NES games and Tetris/Pac-Man 99.
Edit: By the way, regarding the idea that Nintendo is avoiding adding communication features because they don't want to risk abuse, I do think that's probably true but the voice chat on the NSO app actually does let you talk to strangers by default. It puts you in a call with everyone else in the same game lobby as you. It's not really an issue because no one uses the app but it's weird that Nintendo would allow that.
The success of NSO gives Nintendo no incentive to improve the service and to their eyes probably they probably don't care.
I think the real problem is that their way to "improve" NSO was to throw random games at people instead of...actually improving the online service that people paid for because it was required to pay for an online service. I don't think some Nintendo fans realize, but I feel pretty confident in saying the majority, maybe even the vast majority, of people paying for NSO do so because they have to if they want to play their favorite Nintendo games online now. And they use it for nothing else. They might not even know about the SNES games. I know about the SNES games and I've played...2 of them.
NSO succeeded because people had no choice (unless you think people didn't want to play their multiplayer games with online going into the 2020s lololololol). If it was optional, even if it had a bare minimum of extra online features that don't even currently exist, it would still not have done remotely as well.
Does anyone know of a way to check online activity before purchasing a game? I wanted to buy the luigi's mansion DLC and street fighter 30th collection, but not really interested if nobody is playing these games online.
The increasing reliance on live service is just making me very sad. Look at Square Enix for example, this month we saw the release of the very good Triangle Strategy and FF Origin is honestly a lot of fun judging by the demo (sure it's nonsensical at times but in a world where most games are trying to be the next BotW or Fortnite, it's refreshing to have something like Shadow the Hedgehog) but the other 2 releases (Babylon's Fall and Chocobo GP) are completely ruined by live service.
So it looks like my Switch path through the rest of the first half of this year will be something like:
MK8 Deluxe DLC -> Kirby and the Forgotten Land -> Return to Triangle Strategy -> FE Three Houses preparation for Three Hopes -> MH Rise preparation for Sunbreak -> other backlog if not June yet -> Mario Strikers -> Three Hopes -> Sunbreak
Developed by BKOM Studios out of Canada. Whose previous games were Little Lords of Twilight in 2016 and Tales of Candlekeep in 2017? This Zorro game might not be terrible. When I see a publisher like BigBen Interactive attached to the project I immediately assume the worst, lol.
Switch Physical Collection - 1,537 games (as of December 22nd, 2025)
Switch 2 Physical Collection - 4 games (as of December 8th, 2025)
@Fizza Yeah that would have been cool for sure! Kinda figured they'd have Tostarena for this week, since it is the third world in the game. Hopefully we'll get NDC before the next month of NSO icons.
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