Tencent Confirms Free-To-Play Titles Won't Be Impacted By Nintendo Switch Online

that's a good time for sigh of relief.

I don’t think it would so much draw them away, as help retain them as console users. Someone that mostly plays Fortnite on Switch might balk and jump to another platform they own if it were behind a paywall. Honestly, I assumed this would be the case all along.

This will make people less likely to buy into the online, which will make it less profitable for Nintendo, which will do less to encourage Nintendo to develop the service further and will overall be worse for the Switch in the long run. That's how I see it. But I am sure most will disagree with me and I'd prefer to be wrong because I want the Switch to continue to do well and expand.

With Fortnite, AoV, and Paladins not needing the online service, that means you paying for online basically only for Splatoon 2 Mario Kart and Minecraft right now. And I guess Doom and Wolfenstin. Though I don't know if those games have significant multiplayer communities. And presumably Diablo when it launches.

I honestly wish Splatoon 2 had been a launch title and the paid online had been there from day 1, with each launch system simply including a 3 month trial. I feel like the service would have been better received that way. As opposed to changing to a paid service 1.5 years in.

All games on switch right now are free to play! They should just stay that way!

Free-to-play titles behind a paywall doesn't make sense.

Oh wait...

@Heavyarms55 agreed, now the Nintendo Switch online community will be split. You'll get the free to play only users and the Nintendo pay sub users. Not a good move at all.

This isn’t necessarily a good thing. Does this mean even those who subscribed to the service won’t be able to chat without discord?

I just don't think Nintendo has a clue what they're doing online, and they never have. If you look at what Blizzard did with Battle.net, they created an online client that spans their entire host of franchises. It's functions as both a matchmaking system and chat wrapper as well as a launcher for their games.

Nintendo Online SHOULD work the same way. You should be able to play Mario Tennis while your friend is playing Zelda, nudge them and say "Hey, let's go play Dr. Mario for a bit!" and have them join you. I can guarantee that no such thing will happen, possibly ever.

I still cannot believe how utterly archaic and clueless Nintendo seems to be about online gaming. They're timid old men that refuse to embrace what it can offer them, instead thinking they'll be inundated by pedophiles and sued by the parents of young children.

Ugh.

@brandonbwii
Who says Nintendo is going to allow ANYONE to chat?

@Shade_Koopa
I don't think they'll even be "split." There will be a massively fragmented community. Every game that doesn't use Nintendo's online framework will have its own splinter community. I don't think folks playing Fortnite will be able to talk with people playing the Tencent games, and neither will talk to the folks in the Nintendo Online games.

My fear is that this will then go the route that games like Fortnite are going on Android. If Nintendo charges the companies to use their online framework, especially popular games will simply avoid using it and do what Tencent is doing. In the case of Fortnite on Android, you have to sideload the game because the creators don't want to pay Google 30% for store curation. You'd see all the popular games--and likely Origin and EA games--go this route and the fragmentation would get even worse.

I don't think it's going to be a good system for anything but Nintendo-made games.

No, this is going to probably kill Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 online though. I only play MK split screen so I don't really care. A lot of the fun in lost if you dont know or can't talk to your opponents. Splatoon 2 online is the raison d'etre for the game.

I've already seen a decline since fortnite came out. Idk why though. Guess people don't own PCs anymore? Sad. Splatoon 2 is much more fun.

Can't wait to pay for less players online in Puyo Puyo Tetris and Splatoon.

@Trajan haven't touched Splatoon since I saw everybody using that annoying Bloblobber, just camping in one spot and firing off in random directions.

@BigKing that just came out this month. I haven't played in two weeks until the other day and just saw that. I used it for a little bit. Its annoying for both the user and opponent. I was never a bucket guy though.

Even used it tonight when someone was destroying me with it. Went back to dapples though.

I think if you're a really good player you can make them work pretty good.

Only thing I cared about. Makes it easy to wait and see on the online service.

FYI, PS+ and I believe even Xbox Live Gold aren't required for Free-to-play online connectivity, so this really should be par for the course, if true. Really, it'd just screw over all these F2P publishers and fans if they did, causing quite $#!+show. Not to mention there's no business sense behind adding a paywall to games whose main appeal is that they're free games. "Pay us X amount of money to play games that are available for free on other devices, including PC and/or mobile devices" is not a good incentive for most buyers. "We have a bunch of games you can play on our device(s) right out of the box" is a good incentive for potential Switch buyers.

So, yeah, I certainly hope Nintendo still knows how to run a good business.

Is Nintendo trying to encourage people not to buy the online service?

Good

Native chat does not required, Nintendo online so fortnight will not only be play to play online but will still have its chat for free as well.

@Trajan I'm a S+ guy, but the Bloblobber just isn't fun to use or fight. The idea of bouncing off the walls is good, but then it should've been more like a granade launcher. Now you just see a sea of bubbles rondomly jumping everywhere. When you die or get a kill it feels like luck and not because of skill

This means Nintendo has a royalty deal with F2P publishers for a cut of any in-game purchases.

If that sounds like a "duh!", remember that Apple and Google did not always have this kind of luxury. And certainly can't claim any ad revenue royalties from app developers.

This means we might see Nintendo allowing or even encouraging more aggressive monetization schemes from F2P publishers. Let's not hope for that. It also means ads are likely to be banned altogether, which I certainly would appreciate.

@BigKing Then you're certainly better than me. I sort of agree. I was getting most of my kills via a straight line.

@Heavyarms55 Totally agree with you, this is an awful thing, not good news. No one's going to buy things like splatoon if they can play fortnite for free

@AlexOlney It is free to play them online on PS4 also.

Hopefully this will make Microsoft change so that you can on X1. They take a cut of the microtransactions in F2P games. That should be enough.

@Heavyarms55 On the up side it might mean Nintendo has to up the value to make the service as attractive as possible to us.

I think it's time we get some news on the Nintendo Online service. It's right around the corner and we know nothing.

@EightBitMan So not just a troll, an entitled troll.

@ReaderRagfish you must be new to Nintendo

No. Because fortnight is not fun imo. I still don't get it.

@ReaderRagfish hahahahaha

I'm not surprised by this and it's how it should be. That said it will no doubt have an impact on the games that do require the subscription. Some will replace Splatoon 2 with Fortnite for example.