Guide: How To Get Nintendo Switch Online For Less Than $5 Per Year

I'm actually pretty happy that there's a family plan. We have six Switch in the household.

6 x 20 would be too much (especially as the children don't have their own income source)

Can we share it across regions, as well? Or if we buy a family subscription from a UK account, for example, it won't work on a US account?

Bit of clickbaity article

Yep, this is definitely the way to go. Perhaps some Nintendo Lifers might even want to start their own 'families' to get it as cheaply as possible.

Be very careful if you plan to do this with randoms. I'm doing this with friends I know well enough both IRL and on the Internet, and splitting the cost is indeed really nice. But if you are paranoid about getting scammed, you may as well not pay the family plan unless you actually have a family.

Make sure the admin isn't some power-hungry idiot and you'll be fine.

If you have child accounts under your main account then you are already in a family group and can't leave it to join another. You can still add other adult accounts to your group, but not if they already have child accounts themselves.

@JamesR but how many accounts do you have?

this headline makes this joke of a site even funnier

I personally reached out to members in the multiple Discord groups I am in to offer, for free, a spot in my family plan. I fell on rough times last year and wanted to help anyone out that couldn't quite cough up $20. I got 7 takers on my offer and the group is set up

@Beta Surprisingly, it appears to work across regions:

"Can Nintendo Accounts with different country settings share a family membership?
Yes. However, not all features are available in all countries."

It launches on Wednesday the 19th. It's not a thursday. And it launches tommorowin America. The familty subscription is good.

3 Switch in my entire extended family spanning 2 countries (US, Spain) and that includes me. I also bought 2 of them 🙄 Mine and one for my Brother's kid

2 with a WiiU last gen, so we making progress 😅

@neyoung8 "Bit of clickbaity article"

Ha ha, yeah.

NL: "Actually you pay $35 but when you THINK about it, it's like $5 a person!"

Somehow I don't think that's what most of us had in mind coming here.

Yep, silly article and as someone has pointed out, it launches tomorrow on the 18th in the US and in the early hours of the 19th in Europe.

This is dumb. If anyone is seriously having to contemplate paying $20 a year for this can’t be serious. I’m not trying to argue that it’s the greatest feature rich service. But it’s $20 and you knew this from the start that online would eventually be a paid for service. From day one of the Switch this was made known.

@Roam85 six. One for me, one for the wife and we have 4 kids with Switches. Technically, the wife doesn't play online much (we've done Mario Kart while I was out of the country) but the kids will need it for Splatoon 2 and Minecraft (plus Pokemon is coming)

But...if 8 people use the same membership, only the account holder will be eligible to buy the NES style controllers, not the other 7. While some may not care, I also wonder if the discounts/specials that are coming in the future will only be available to the account holder.

Not worth $5 a year. I'll give it a miss until they create a decent service with value.

Ever hear of the TV anywhere initiative? It allows people to use their cable TV account logins to watch streaming shows.

Except sharing the login details wiry family and friends is as huge problem so cable companies use countermeasures to combat this.

No, I don't expect Nintendo will allow people to group buy who arw geographically far away after a bit of time goes on.

They will likely restrict this based on IP address geo location and the like.

These clickbait articles just undo all the other good work the site does.

Technically, yes, it launches in the US tomorrow 9/18/18. After 11P Eastern. So one hour to download Update 6.0.0 and sign up before it's 9/19/18

If I add friends and the decide I dwant not want them in my family account anymore, would I be able to remove them?

@Fake-E-Lee I am in the exact same boat as you! Haven't played hardly any of those games in ages.

I'll be splitting costs of the subscription with 4 other people, which is $7 per person. Pretty good deal IMO, even given how underwhelming the service actually is.

@EvilLucario even with a power hungry idiot in charge, you lose $4.38. That is for an entire year, most people won't notice it. There really is almost no reason not to try to round up enough people. Well, at least give it one try.

@westman98 I am doing the same, many people are.

This seems like way more work and coordination than I can handle. I’ll just pay $20, as I don’t know anyone that I trust enough to pay their share.

@neyoung8 how? They promise to explain how to get it for less than $5, they continue to explain exact that.
They deliver on their title.

@Galenmereth Not if they are your friends/family.

@justin233 Yeah, I'm not even doing this with my bestie for her birthday. It's easier for me to just worry about my own. Sure, I could save $5 if I bought a family plan and put our accounts on it. But it's not work a burger to me.

@Fake-E-Lee I can't wait, either, but I'm in Eastern time, so I'll have to. That maintainence is from 8-11, then I'd have to update that's an hour past my big boy bedtime

The full plan is like $1.70 per month... Why you would both scamming this? I totally get if you actually have multiple switches for this plan, but why go to all the trouble to split this with strangers for such a small savings?

Getting the family sub. 31.49 for me. Can’t make the kids, nephews, nieces pay.

@Fake-E-Lee Me too! I looked up that adventures of lolo game you mentioned and thought it looked pretty cool! I have never heard of it before today.

The clickbait's not very appreciated.

What this article doesn’t mention is that you actually need to have friends for this to work. We’re gamers, not socialites.

Complete with an appropriate clickbait Youtube thumbnail of a bearded man who looks like he just saw a naked woman for the first time in his life.

This article was an insult to my intelligence.

I can see some major flaws with this.

What if the master acc forgets to renew? 8 people will lose data. Nah im good ty.

Also another issue with this is... why bother?

When exactly was the stupidly low price of £20 a year ever an issue with the online?

Actually on a short list of great things about the online, the price would be at the top... This seems very pointless to me.

@MichaelHarvey Seriously? Even the individual membership for $20 per year is extremely cheap for an online service, and one you can take with you anywhere, for that matter. Compared to Xbox and PS+ it's a great value. My only complaint is that voice chat needs to be reworked so it's integrated into the Switch instead of this smartphone app nonsense.

The clickbait is strong with this one...
@gloom
Friends are like flowers. You can drown them, with too much water. So [removed]. Don't bother.

Only how likely will it be that most of us have 7 potential subscribers to jump in with you?? I don’t

@1UP_MARIO Well, all the youngins will have to give you a cut of their Halloween candy, right?

Over the year the cost of the subscription is tiny anyway, is it really worth all the hassle to try and get 7 other people together and pay their share, and then remember to collect it all again next year? And if people drop out (which is likely) you then have to find new people and bleugh! No thanks.

I swear is I pay $20 only for Smash Bros to be PvP. I will tell Reggie to stick those new NES joycon where the sun don't shine. The price isn't bad, but i hate paying for online only for the servers to not be dedicated. It's especially a problem when some people such as myself own more than one console, but cannot afford the extra subscriptions.

Might just spend the extra $15 so I can hand out free accounts to my friends who are too lazy/broke to do it themselves.

So if I have two accounts on my Switch, I can make them both in my family, then also have other friends be added to the family as well?

The other thing unmentioned is that apparently only the primary account holder can get special offers such as the ability to buy the NES controller joy-con. There will likely be other similar primary account holder only offers, so realize that going in.

Also going forward starting tomorrow you can't separate your Network ID from your Nintendo account, they'll be synonymous. Basically it's the only way they could really easily pull this off. But in doing so you can easily add family, friends, and freeloaders to your Online account.

I wish we could start paying for this service today, I'd really like to get my preorder in on those controllers (that cost as much as the NES Classic).

@Nico07 Just use the Joy-Cons. You'll get more functionality out of them, you can use them whenever you want, even when you don't have a subscription, and you'll save $60.

People in the plan won't have access to my credit card information???

@neyoung8 Not really, since it was exactly what it said it was. No snake oil here. This is a legitimate method

This online service is absolutely pathetic lol.

See, it's never been about it being extravagantly expensive, because it absolutely isn't.

My personal issue with it is, when you give a corporation money, you're supporting them and what they're doing.
But their online service is ba-friggin'-loney.

If they can get by with charging for a joke, you're paying for laughs.

"As the purchaser of a Family Membership, you will need to be at least 18 years old and save your credit card or link your PayPal account to your Nintendo Account via Nintendo eShop."

I wonder if this is important?

@james_squared if its anything like PSN and XL (and the likes of youtube). the host (chap who pays) will need a credit card/paypal so they can automatically take the next payment when the sub runs out.

Roughly 18 million units sold. If 1/8th of the install base pays for this garbage, Nintendo makes about 45 million dollars. For nothing.

It's my understanding they don't even have their own online servers, and the multiplayer is P2P. Why?

Why you tryna give them 45 million dollars for crappy online?
This is what's irritating about it. If morons gave me 45 million dollars for nothing, guess what y'all would get?
Nothing. Ever. Y'all gonna give me money anyway, why would I work to better what I'm offering you? Money talks, and you know who's listening.

I'm not denying it's ability to grow into a competent service, it COULD happen, I just doubt it at this point.

And you're not morons, I'm sorry. I just don't get it, is all.

The service is botched. If they wanted to save it, with effort and care, they'd rework the system's UI (or rather, just the system's internal framework) to start and partner with Discord or something to provide universal system chat. But, I'd wager they're not doing that, and relegating it to a phone app because that might just be too much to process on p2p connections in the first place, 'cause this harebrained idea was botched from the start.

kermitsippingtea.jpg

You pretty much killed the 3ds from this article since Nintendo wants one switch per family system.

@abe_hikura I hope that's all it is. I don't want my credit card attached to the eShop for purchases.

Not cool, NL. Clickity McClickbait ...It’s great they have a family plan for those houses with lots of machines, but if you can’t afford a $20 account and you’re an individual... You may need to get off the games and get your priorities straight.

My only gripe with the online service is not the price, or even the cloud saves; 20 dollars yearly isn't a huge deal.

My gripe is with the forced phone app for voice chat and game features(like in Splatoon). I'm not sure if it comes from ignorant old CEO's in Japan, or just a cultural bubble with a phone obsession. But it's frustrating, and unnecessary.

@BensonUii Never thought of that, good thinking. I can imagine there will be some agreeing to sharing family subscriptions with complete strangers on Reddit forums and Discord servers. Risky move! Especially if it's the primary account that does the hacking.

arent there any "buts"? I mean like buts, like but + but equals buts, not butts...

Dates are wrong on this article. Also, be careful whom you connect this Family plan with.

Im confused... So, if I only have one switch and I have two users on this switch, do I have to get a single online subscription or a family pass?

@nonprophetmusic It's early days, it will evolve, it will get better. We know Nintendo take things slowly and make baffling decisions but it's very important they get this right. It's starting with the bare minimum and some revamped NES games to make it seem worth it but they can only keep adding NES games for so long. New features will be added, others will be improved and games from other consoles will arrive. It's not great, it is what it is for now but we knew it was coming, they've been clear on this from day one and since it got delayed we've had a few extra months of free service. By the time the next generation arrives, the service will be there from day one and will be much improved from the one launching tomorrow.

@HobbitGamer that’s the plan and a great one too.

Good as this sounds, I'm a little afraid there might be a catch we're not aware of yet... I've got people over 3 seperate households with 5 people I would want to try this with (including myself), but I don't know. Would it really work well over different Switch systems over different households? And would it also work if you'd want to include somebody from another region in on the plan?

@Yosher it should work. I’ve added 6 people in total and a jap account.

@Voodoo family subscription

@OorWullie You're right, I'm sure of it, in most respects, but they're a friggin' multi-million to billion dollar company. They need to get it together strongly. I know Nintendo has always been a very... safely, carefully paced company, but they need to kind of get it together, and you know I'm right, too. It's kinda like with how, everyone's like, "oooh, mistah Nintendo man, I need me that Nsixfour classic," and they're like, "yeah, dude, we totally know and feel you and will deliver, but we're still tryna ride the SNES Classic train until it dies and we have to burn the tracks so there's no evidence."

I get it. It's Nintendo's thing, man. They don't stop at beating the horse when it dies. They gotta drain the blood and repurpose it. Kick it some more, just make sure it's got no second death wind in it.

I will never not love Nintendo, but I will always be critical of their obvious shortcomings. I'm sure they've got the Switch lifecycle pretty well planned out on paper, and that could mean, a revisit to the virtual console, (this, "oh you got a library of games to access," stuff is noise) and we could see GameCube titles hit the sucker, in three or four years, in an official capacity. It feels like, while the system has already enjoyed an awesome amount of success, they're dampening it, I suppose, and just really limiting what it can do.

It came out swinging when the bell first rang, but now it's on the ropes. Why isn't he fighting back? Where are the punches? Why doesn't he guard his face? If he keeps taking this kind of abuse from his opponent, is he even gonna be able to take him in the 9th round? Why is he gonna wait until the 9th round to act like he cares again?

Does... that... that makes sense, right?

@neyoung8 Yeah a bit pointless if you're on your own.

@Cosats that’s true and it’s best to stick to family and friends those you trust

@Fake-E-Lee You mean Wednesday morning, right? Thats probably what I’ll do too. Maybe even take the switch over to Starbucks at lunch.
Enjoy ATL, I’m down near SAV, in the Boro

I mean, this is fun and all, but it's not really a solution. That being said, I'm sponsoring 4 people with a family sub (rest of the slots going to my own region-specific accounts and my gfs account), and I'll just pay the whole shabang. Got people's emails and auto-setup an email that'll send 11 months after nintendo switch online launches, informing them that there is only one month left of the annual sub and that they should contact me if they need information on whether I am renewing it or not (spoiler alert: I am, obviously).

Still, this is a workaround that kinda requires people you trust... Unless you're the admin, like me.

For ***** sake, don't get a coffee, etc for a few days. 20 bucks no screw that let's setup a bunch of acconts to save 15 dollars over a year.

Maybe I am wrong and this was making fun of the absurdity of some commenters on other articles. If so sorry, great stuff.

I've never called a article on NintendoLife clickbait, but this is just pathetic. Just make the headline "how to setup a family account", not this. I'm honestly appalled.

Are we a bit desperate for traffic this week, NL?

@Fake-E-Lee Sheesh, man, settle down. This is the Internet. You're not allowed to be happy here.

So nintendo is the only company thats going to charge multiple times any user on ONE console just to play co op? Noone has a problem with this? Whats next? Will they start demanding that every person on ONE console has to buy said game just to play with eachother together online? Every user on ONE console must buy DLC multiple times if all the people on that ONE console wants to play with the DLC. Wow, Nintendo really screwed this one up. I have one switch that me and my little boy play with and now have a higher fee to pay if we dare both play something online together. ALL of nintendos competition consoles dont do this to their customers. Now is a good time as any to look into a console that will run steam games on televisions being the switch is nothing more that a console that lets you play random games thats been out on steam already for years with the perk that you can play first party Nintendo made games on as well and we all know how long it takes for those games to even come out. Keep shooting yourself in the foot Nintendo because you're going to flat out ruin something that was once good. You cant even give us a browser or even Netflix because you're probably trying to figure out a way to charge everyone a monthly fee that dares to want to use it on your system ^smh*

@Voodoo After what happened to the Wii U, I would not hold your breath anymore for an internet browser.

So... people are really going to club together in little groups of 8 to share a cost of $20 for a year? It breaks down to $1.66 per month, but you'd want to spend time finding a way to share the cost between 8 friends, pretending you're a family group? Uh-huh.

It sucks that if my 6 and 12 year old want to carry on playing Splatoon in the way they've become accustomed (on the same console) I'll have to fork out for a family membership. A family membership should be more than one console, not more than one account.

There are at least 5 NES games I want to play, so those alone are worth the $20 for the first year, plus it's nice to be able to try out the less interesting ones on impulse. If the service keeps expanding with more good NES games and (as seems likely) SNES games, I'm really gonna like it.

This is shamefully bad clickbait guys. Come on, you’re better than this!

@aznable Mind your language.

@nonprophetmusic Metroid Prime Hunters, a 2006 DS game, had voice chat enabled in the lobby for online with friends. Clubhouse Games (also a 2006 DS game) let you draw custom drawings/messages with friends online during games. It's hilarious to me that 2006 DS games somehow offered MORE communication options than 2017 first-party Switch games.

I highly doubt Nintendo doesn't have the funds to implement some type of native communication/invite system for the Switch. They are just that inept and backwards at anything online. Part of me theorizes that this is mainly on the company culture at Nintendo of Japan. I imagine some higher ups at Nintendo of America, UK, etc. are quite aware of the NSO/voice chat ineptitude but are helpless in trying to scrutinize the topic or bring any meaningful change.

@Octane
I swear I'm trying!

@nonprophetmusic I hear you man. I've been trying to make the point that no one has been saying that $20 a year is a lot of money to pay. (And some will apparently be getting it for less than $5, so, good for them.) But the service could have been so much better and I'm very skeptical it ever will get better. (Remember all those people saying mynintendo would get better?)

So in the end this is a cheap cash grab by Nintendo and most people will just go along because it doesn't cost much.

I hope I'm wrong though, and the service does improve, but they've had plenty of time and have plenty of money. They should have started this service off with a bang and offered fans something to really get excited about.

who manages the group? you lovely person I have a bridge to sell you

@markiej__ Mind your language.

Also, @AlexOlney , it looks like it may be time to Switch (CLICK) laxatives, based on that thumbnail........ Jus' sayin'.......

@ChameleonBros I don't know, but personally I like to pin the blame on Reggie for every baffling decision Nintendo makes.

@Voodoo No, you don't need 2 online accounts to play co-op on one console. You don't need any online accounts to play co-op on one console. You need an online account to play co-op online which is inherently using only one account per console. Couch-coop is offline, and therefore requires no subscription.

You would need 2 accounts to play co-op across 2 Switches in a game that requires you play online instead of local wireless, however. I.E. Splatoon, ARMS, MK8D allow local wireless between consoles: No online required, no sub required. Doom multiplayer I believe requires online to play multiplayer, thus sub required.

@nonprophetmusic 20m as of end of July btw... Or around that.

Its prob around 22m now.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/7/31/17633740/nintendo-earnings-q1-2018-switch-sales-figures

We should get next figures by end of this month for August but NPD is always a month or so late.

@Voodoo wut? So Microsoft doesn't make you buy a gold account for each individual user then?

Because i certainly remember me and my brother having to purchase 2 gold accounts for one Xbox so both our account could be gold....

I know psn does the same...

What are you talking about?

@neyoung8 lol bait and Switch 😂. Jump through hoops and needing multiple accounts. Nah.

@neyoung8 I had suspected it and it was confirmed after I was told to do something I already knew.

This idea’s been bandied about a bunch, and it’s terrible. Nintendo’s going cheap enough IMO, and families really need savings when they can get them, so the Family Plan is just generous. Why should someone be excited about exploiting (ruining) the system when it’s already a good system? What’s wrong with the honor system?

@stevenw45 they will is people keep abusing it, and ruining it for actual families.

@neyoung8 Certainly long winded for something that can be explained in one or two sentences.

@Ryan_Again Huh?

Seems like a lot of people are getting worked up over something so mundane. Good lord.

@Razer Ok, this is what I mean... If I boot up Rocket league on my switch then my son presses start on the other controller, he chooses his Mii as the co op player and then we go online in a team of 2. Is this going to require the family pass? On playstation four with one ps plus account I can start a game that has online coop such as plants vs. zombies 2 split screen online and Helldivers the same it doesnt force the person thats my online coop partner on the same system to have an additional account to join in. This is what im confused about

@Galenmereth "Pretty sure this breaks Nintendo's TOS"

Well, let's see if they update them when the service launches, but I didn't see any mention of limitations about which Accounts belonging to who can be in a Family Group or utilize the Family Membership in any of the Terms of Use or End User License Agreements that I could find.

@Razer Also, I dont know about xbox but on ps plus you can pay for one subscription and it will allow anyone on that console to play online for example a game such as GTA V with one ps plus membership I can play online and when I'm done, I can log out of my profile, my son switches to his profile and can load up GTA V using his created character to play online

@neyoung8 I knew it sounded like something out of my spam folder the moment I clicked.

@Razor You are correct, both PSN and Xbox Live use to be that way but they no longer are.

I’m getting the family plan since I have 3 kids with Switches and one for myself as well. Probably add my nephew to our family plan also. Get as much value out of it as I can. Basically $7 a person per year. Really can’t find anything to complain about at that cost. Excited to download the update tomorrow.

Article: pointless.

@ChameleonBros It's odd, because I find myself really torn after a couple of points have been made. The Japanese really do seem to dig their phones, and I could see this as the cause for why this... hmm... "feels foreign," to us, to a certain degree. We're not the ones heading up Nintendo, we didn't make the Switch. Being a creative type, I would feel very alienated and disinterested in someone telling me that I needed to change the way I personally like doing things. "Change this snare drum to a duck quacking. Change this chord progression. Change these words. Use a different instrument. Ok, now we love it." Well, now it's not the thing I made, and I don't like that. I dunno. I have my leanings toward, "hey, Nintendo, figure out your commercial product so the consumers will want it." But... I can heavily relate to wanting to do things as I do them, as that's what I do. I wouldn't even like being told to do it different.

@Razer Semantics. The point of "how y'all tryna give them xMillions of dollars for diddly," stands. But I know you're not even tryna be nitpicky. I just went for the first figure I saw upon a Google.

@Ryan_Again I need that nifty green thing in your avatar, and I don't even have any clue as to what it's for. Lol

A family plan is of absolutely no use to me as I am the only person in my family who plays Switch.

@boop22 Hey now, this site isn't THAT bad. If you want to see a true joke of a site go to IGN.

@thiswaynow $35 split between 8, not $20

@JayJ i'd say polygon is worse imo

@boop22 Yeah that site is just kinda odd, it is weirdly politicized for a gaming site.

I enjoy the fact that Wii U had more complete and robust online services than Switch. But this is all down to Switch lack of power compared to U.

So is this article implying that I charge my family members every year to use my Switch or gather 7 randoms/friends because both ideas are stupid. I'm not sharing my Switch. MY PRECIOUS!

@Pablo17 so if i have an Xbox gold account on my Xbox, if my friend migrates his account over to my console, he will have Xbox gold too?

So you're gonna whine about this getting removed because people are abusing it and blame nintendo or yourselves?

@nonprophetmusic Well to be honest... The way Nintendo have played it. Most people will sign up. In fact with this strategy Nintendo will get bigger subscription numbers than Sony (25m) eventually.

They did a really clever thing here. Most people will effectively be backed into a corner and will eventually sign up.

Not now but when peoples frustration and disappointment abates...

When your save data gets too big to ignore and not back up... Like having 500+ hours on various games, that £20 a year won't seem so expensive.

When that VC starts getting SNES games you want to play portable... Or even N64 games, imagine 80+ classic games for 1.70 a month... Portable... Any gamer would be stupid to let that up, no matter how many times you own them.

Nah bro eventually Nintendo will have you too, best come to terms with that now. They played a clever trick here, hid their useless online multiplayer behind two features they know people will need and really want.

This method sounds more complicated than it needs to be. This may work for an entire staff at Nintendolife, but I can't imagine this working for most users unless they're part of some kind of gaming group. I'd rather just pay the fee or use my gold coins on it. I think I can afford the piddling amount Nintendo is asking for it, just wish they would make more of an effort to sweeten the pot a bit. I'm hoping those "special offers" they mentioned before will be sales similar to PS Plus. Nintendo is notoriously tight-fisted with sales to begin with, I wouldn't mind seeing a sale over 30% for once.

I feel like the best thing we had was the Digital Ambassador or whatever it was called service. Man that was friggin' awesome. I felt like I was actually getting something out of that.

People need to quit griping. PS+ takes away 100% of your free video games and Cloud Saves if you let your subscription expire. Just like how Nintendo will take away all or your cloud saves and your free NES games. Of course Xbox gamers have it better as they can keep any free 360 game and XBLA game if they let their Gold pass expire.

@Razer Yeah, so my Switch is hacked, I have local backups of my saves and can play NES, SNES, GB/C/A, PSX, PSP, Gamecube, etc.

So, yeah, no, they'll get money for games from me, but not their "service." I couldn't care less. I'd be on-board if the service wasn't garbage. I'll stick with my foil, thx.

You have to be really cheap in order to think that $20 a year is expensive or not worth investing into. It comes down to $1.67 a month. That's cheaper than Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu and other streaming services... If you pay a monthly subscription to any of these(which I do, Crunchyroll and Amazon Prime), then you have no problem increasing the bill by $1.67 a month... Except the difference is that you're saving up for next year's subscription.

@nonprophetmusic ah okay yeah you won't need the service.

I guess that is going to be a popular route for many to take considering the hardware is meant to be totally compromised.

Good point. And to be honest i would have booed you before but i hardly blame you now. Nintendo have kinda asked for this afterall.

@penamiguel92 Would you like to buy my toilet brush for $20?

It comes down to $1.67 a month. That's cheaper than Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu and other streaming services... If you pay a monthly subscription to any of these(which I don't, Crunchyroll is free), then you have no problem increasing the bill by $1.67 a month... Except the difference is that you'll have it forever.

@Razer If they came out, like, "hey, it comes with GameCube," or even N64 games, I'd be more with it. I want to give them money, but I'm not paying for things I neither need nor want. Some nearly 4 decade year old games don't make their P2P nonsense any better. It doesn't have a browser, access to YouTube or Netflix, I don't need it online. I'll play locally with my friends. If Brawl was any indication, which, I imagine they've tried to get better, online play is just never gonna be my bag, anyway.

No matter how cheap it is, I refuse to pay a save game protection racket.

Cya
Raziel-chan

@Razor Yes, anyone on that console will have Gold, just need one account now days. I remember when everyone had to have Gold, it sucked.

@chardir If you have child accounts under your main account then you are already in a family group and can't leave it to join another. So when the children grow up and move out they can't be removed from your main account?

@nonprophetmusic okay that is a silly analogy because if your toilet brush somehow had access to 20 NES games with a growing library, cloud saves and online play... It would be purchased by every toilet owning human alive.

Terrible analogy 😂😂

@nonprophetmusic i actually want this toilet brush! 😂

@Razer It may or may not do anything apart from functioning as a toilet brush. Tomorrow, I will announce a date for the announcement regarding potential upcoming features which might be nothing.

@BladedKnight I originally thought so also, but, not really true... they are saying, you can organize with a group of friends, choose this method, and each chip in $5....

@Razzy Lolz. #GrowUp

@nonprophetmusic OH Your a thief. How cool... #NOT

@nonprophetmusic have patience man it will get better in coming months with more content rolling in and $20 is a very reasonable price for the online better then paying $60+ for psn and xbox live.

So... some questions:

1. One Switch, two accounts:
My girlfriend and I have an account each on my Switch. If we both want to play online from our accounts, is it enough with just one $20 subscription or do we both need to subscribe, alternatively going for the family subscription?

2. Several Switches, several accounts:
I have some friends with Switch. You can say it looks like this: 1 Switch with 2 accounts, 1 Switch with 2 accounts and 1 Switch with 1 account. In total 5 unique accounts on 3 Switches.
If we want to share the cost, we could set up a family subscription as described in this article? If we do that, is it possible to play online at the same time? For example if we would like to play Splatoon 2 together with 3 of the accounts on the 3 Switches? Or is it only one account at the time that can use the service if it's a shared subscription on serveral Switches?

@Camilla I anticipate or hope it will get better. Will it be soon enough? I mean, that’s all perspective, but I’d be happy to be paying $60 a year for decent online that had good offerings. That’s the thing with the competitor’s services, they offer some really cool games every month. I mean sure, they’re from the last two decades, usually, and... that’s much preferred.
I love the NES. I’ve still got my old guy and a classic, so they don’t have any luster as Switch titles.

@PLAYwithGregg How about [this is a website with children in the audience] it and don’t make assumptions? Lemme find you ever ripped a CD. You and your unauthorized reproduction. Bet you didn’t even have express written consent from the copyright holders.

I don’t debate with people that don’t have a firm grasp of the language I speak. It’s ok, a lot of native speakers don’t understand how it works, so you trying to learn is really cool, and you should be proud. Like your mother. She raised/is raising a winner. Some day, you might even be able to pick up the little nuances, and things like sarcasm. Could be some time, though. Go stream a video game, you beautiful, shiny beacon of justice.

@neyoung8 100%

Good. I'm not even going to pay more than 5 bucks for this sad excuse of a "service". Nintendo is really dumb if they really thought that it would only be used by families. Should have called this a "Nintendo Group Account" or something.

@MichaelHarvey perhaps to you. Others find the cloud saves, NES games or online play alone enough. But it would be nicer if there were non subscription alternatives to all of these. Perhaps if you run your own splatoon server...

As long as NES games are accessible to every person in that 8 people group, and the administrator doesn't have to share their e-mail and passwords with anybody, I'm in. But I'll wait just in case. I want to be sure it works, and I don't need it to start tomorrow. What's the rush?

@Octane Will do.

I could go through these ridiculous steps to save a few quid, or I could stick with a large group of intelligent people who aren't going give in and sign up to an exploitative subscription that is a gateway to being financially tied to a corporation in order to carry on playing games I've already paid for.

It's not about the amount of money, it's the principle. Why is this so hard for people to understand? This whole scam has got a lot of negative feedback on YouTube, it would be nice if sites like this wrote interesting articles on something like that instead of agenda fuelled clickbait like this.

I like how some are even defending and telling you to pay the individual plan. We’ve come to the point where people are fine with paying for online. Sick. And yes, I don’t care about online saves and so, haven’t ever lost or broken a console since the SNES.
Phone app is a joke own it’s on and the “special discounts”... we have no details about just yet. Wake up people, online multiplayer was free all this time until PS4, Xbox One.

It was click baity, but chill out folks. I think NL have got the point of what you're saying.

@markiej__ Please don't re-edit comments. Profanity isn't allowed, and that includes self-censoring words. Just try to avoid them.

@Octane That would be fine except you edited my post to delete the swear word and the word Sherlock so that not only did it no longer read as the age old saying it also made no sense ‘One to file under no’.

But where does one get 7 friends? Can I buy them?

@Pignot Yes, and I'll tell you how to get them each for less than $5 a year!

@JamesR quick question here, do you know if everyone gets the free games and monthly games? Or is it just the main member who gets it?

@JasonLee99 yes these are things I'd also like to know. Like do all 8 people get the free games and monthly games or will it be the main member only

@Pirlo_ze_sniper I believe it's all linked members of the family plan. I'm pretty sure that's the case. I will know for certain tomorrow.

Ok cool, because also got a group who want to do this, just not too sure about all the details.

@Whalehome My point is that the single user cost is $20, and people would be going to all the effort of creating a fake family unit to try to avoid that cost.

@thiswaynow Understood. But when I see a coupon, rebate or exploit to save some money, I'm taking it

@lvsteven Terrible idea for a handheld console. I travel between continents with my switch fairly regularly.

@f1r3f1y

I go between north America (where internet is everywhere) and SE Asia where its very much a luxury... You don't need to belief me, but logging into switch every 7 days a to prove I can play smb3 is just stupid.

BTW, I'm a day 1 switch as well as NSO adopter, it's just not the best way to handle online, trust me.

@Denoloco @Old-Red Yes, I agree with you. Online should be considered as already included in the price of the console/games.

Having said that I may be a complete hypocrite as some friends of mine are planning to setup a family plan and asked if I want in. Still not sure if I care enough one way or the other. This may be Nintendo's plan to get as many people as possible to sign up, still make a quick buck, then later jack up the price or change the terms of service.

@JamesR @Pirlo_ze_sniper
Can either of you, or anyone else here, confirm how this works and that there aren't any unexpected restrictions or issues with the family plan?

@tedko @Pirlo_ze_sniper

Yep. I purchased the family plan this morning and have set it up on 5 Switch (can't find the wife's!). I've been able to download and play the NES library app (which is surprisingly good/fast interface wise. I wish we had an option to remap buttons but I digress) on all machines. There are no locks on X number of people playing at once and they all work offline (i.e. airplane mode). Online multiplayer between accounts on the same membership also work. I got a two player session setup between two Switch (this basically mirrors the screen on both units) for two player games/pass the controller. As far as I can see there are no downsides - you basically get 8 times a standard membership.

Cloud saves have started being backed up on all Switch. In addition to Splatoon 2 not being supported, I also noticed that Minecraft wasn't either. However, the kids seem to have 1GB worth of save data each (I assume this is a world they've built) so that sounds like a reasonable excuse.

My setup is that each Switch is setup for a different Nintendo account and the children have their accounts linked to mine via the Nintendo account website. I assume you'll need to do something similar. I'm not sure how you "group" families together that aren't child accounts.

@JamesR Ok. Thanks for the reply!

One cool thing you can do with 2 Switch is this: use one in handheld mode and have a second connected to the TV. Both can connect via the 'Play Online' feature of the NES app. This will mirror your handheld NES playing onto the TV. It basically feels exactly like a Wii U gamepad setup. I'm very impressed that I cannot feel any noticeble lag in this setup.

I'm trying to set a family group, but have concerns. People is starting to say that we all must be in the same region, but one of the candidates lives in Japan. Can anyone confirm if it's true?

And can you get it on another region (South Africa namely) for its cheaper price and change back to yours after that? As you do with games, I mean. No extra profiles, just switching regions.

Useless tip for those of us who genuinely need to get a family pass to cover myself and three children!