Nintendo Switch Online Will Start On 19th September, More Info Coming In Direct

Free trial sounds interesting for those on the fence - it’s coming!

Good to know an exact date.

@JoeDiddley Ooh, I love a good trail. Will there be hidden items, and a good picnic spot? Hope so.

Please Nintendo...give us a reason to actually be excited about this tomorrow.

The beginning of the end is cometh.

Exciting times! There's more to this Switch Online than we think there's going to be,of that I'm sure.

Plus if Urban Champion Online isn't one of these 10 unannounced NES games I'll eat my left Joy-con, strap attached.

i'll try the free trial before buying. let's hope it's worth it.

Shame they don't do a deal on a dual membership - means I have to get the family one instead and have plenty of spares ^_^

let me know when paying for this service offers more than PSN being free in the PS3 gen.

I have a theory that they will FINALLY start offering My Nintendo discounts on switch games, if you also pay for online services.

Okay.....
I must add my Fund to Subscribe the Online Service.
Can i use my $ 20 from E-Shop fund ?

"Nintneod Switch Online"

When they announce a New Switch in 2 years will they change the name to:

"Nintnedo New Switch Online"?

Sorry, this is the first time the name caught my attention, I always thought it was called "Nintnedo Online".

Wheres the carear tab

One more week to play online for free.

Thank God for the free trial as i don't get paid until the 24th September

Zelda NES come to meeeee!

@fiben1002 I think it might be 2x Gold coins for subscribers,which would be great. Or knowing Nintendo it'll probably 6% instead of 5%.

Not super happy for paying a fee for something that used to be free and is subpar to the competition. I know the price is low, but still.. And I care not for NES games.

@OorWullie I'll take you up on that. I'm willing to bet Nintendo has finally given up on trying to force Urban Champion on us.

Hah, screw that. I'll just pay right away.

I don't think I'm playing any game that require it so we'll see...

I'll do my best to watch this Direct but it being on at 5am for me is far from ideal.

The only compelling factor right now is being able to continue playing online games that I already have (Splatoon 2, Mario Kart and ARMS). Big old bait and switch (ironic!), awful behaviour from Nintendo, imho

@rjejr Well, it doesn't include 3DS, so it is Switch Online.

This will most likely be the deciding factor in whether the direct was great or terrible for a lot of people. The direct can go 4 ways:
1) The games segment was great but the online part sucked
2) The games segment sucked but the online part was great
3) Both games and online segment was great
4) Both games and online segment sucked
I think option 1 will be the mostly likely outcome of the direct but here's hoping option 3 is what most people will think of the direct.
Edit - Wait I just noticed that the article says that more info will be given on the 14th, not the 13th. Either this is a typo or my original assumption was correct, Nintendo would give the online service it's own direct which I hope this is the case.

@WiteWulf How is it bait and switch when we've known about the paid online service for over a year?

@MikeW Timezones. Midnight 14th CET = 13th GMT or US time.

about time

Heck yes, I wonder if the cancelled direct was originally planned to share details about it, or the combination of the natural disaster and leaks forced their hand.

7-Day Free Trial? But I hate lawyers!

...I'll show myself out.

Sad though that only a short amount of time remains in which you can Splatoon 2 for free I know it's a stupid move, but I think I might pay for the online service just so I can continue playing Splatoon 2, the game is truly excellent and I wished I had gotten into it so much sooner than I did.

Hopefully/likely we'll hear the 10 yet-to-be-revealed NES titles. Kind of hoping Castlevania III is one of them.

Forgive me, but I do not want to hear the words "Balloon Fight".

@UmbreonsPapa @WiteWulf Actually we've known about it since the Switch premier. It was announced before ARMs or Splatoon 2 were announced.

@gcunit ha, I spotted and corrected straight away. The shame!

I won't be buying it instantly. I'm thinking if I buy it around Christmas, a new subscription could be a present every year. I don't play online much at the moment. anyway.

@Yorumi If your talking about certain 3rd party games not having cloud saves, that's on them not Nintendo (I thought people knew this but I guess not :/). But it is inexcusable why games like Splatoon 2 and the 'Let's Go' games don't enable them as well as why their voice chat still sucks royally even in 2018.

@OorWullie I will absolutely take you up on that bet. But I'll eat my right joycon because the girlfriend spilled a beer on it and it doesn't work well and there's no value eating a perfectly functional joycon.

Also double coins would be fine with me.

And cue the outrage that it doesn't spit out free GameCube titles every month

@Syrek24 entitlement would imply we were getting it for free.

Expecting a paid service to add anything of value is not entitlement.

Have you switched your direct deposit to Nintendo yet?

@chardir True, but I still think it's an odd name. Better than MyRewards I suppose, but it only explains maybe what, 1 third of the service? Nintneod Switch Online says nothing about NES games, or that some games online might still be free like Fortnite, I suppose it includes online saves, for the games that allow online saves. I thought it would be "Nintnedo Subscription Service" or something like that, to cover all you pay for. PS+ is paid to play online, but it has the + for a reason. Xbox Live has a little attempt at a name, and I remember when Gold was paid and silver was free.

How's this for an explanation, "Nintnedo Switch Online" sounds more like a verb to me - "I'm going to play my Nintnedo Switch on line." - than it does a noun - "I'm going to pay for Nintendo Switch Online." When you put them both together it sounds redundant - "I'm going to pay for Nintnedo Switch Online to play my Nitnedo Switch online."

Why I didn't catch it months ago when they announced it as the name I have no idea. Maybe my brain thought it was a work in progress with the official name to come?

@ilikeike Paying for the privilege to play online should make you feel excited

I'm not sure what financial position everyone is in, but it's twenty quid for a year. Just everyone chill out. Get one less McDonalds per month if you're that hard up.

Free trail, I bet that will be just like now, free online. After buying a subscription you get the nes games and ''all the extra's''.

We'll see. Maybe you don't have to pay to play Fortnite free?

Nintendo Switch Online: Where you can now play Splatoon 2, but not back up your save data, cause, ya know, reasons.

Yes yes yes! I just wish it would've come a week later. I've been waiting to play NES games on the switch what feels like forever now and of course it launches while I'm out of the country for a week. And i don't feel like bringing my switch through the airport on a plane in all honesty. Instead I'll bring my 2ds. Hoping they have some available now content from the direct tomorrow for 2ds i can download before I depart Sunday. Cannot wait to get back home and fire up NESflix!

I can't wait to not play the NES games

@rjejr my eyes were bleeding with the number of times Nintendo was misspelled!

@frabbit exactly I honestly don't get the backlash or gripe about price. It's the most appealing part aside from the nes games for me

So here's my chance to boycott it in the name of fanship and "customer friendliness"! My payday's on 21st, after all. XD

Welcome to this decade Nintendo, I'll see you in a few years online once you get through the initial teething issues you'll experience even though you have plenty of references on what not to do

I’ll get the first month regardless because it’s affordable

@nintendobynature Yeah, I mean, we can't expect Nintendo to watch Microsoft and Sony make money off their online service and not capitalize on their own.

If we get nothing at all but continued online play, a few NES games, and cloud saves I can't see that we've got any right to expect anything else.

That said, would I like a free indie game every month, or SNES games instead of NES? Or Gamcube instead of SNES? Yes. Just don't have a right to complain in the likely event that we get nothing extra.

@Yorumi Are u trolling or something? U seen to mock Nintendo every article you join in. If you don't like the company, then why hang out in a Nintendo news site like this?

@NewAdvent Fair, yeah. But there's a wee week's free trial for them to make that decision for themselves.

This is it, prepare yourselves...I'm gonna laugh if the service craps out at the start.

@Yorumi Hi mate. Play your PC then. It now costs to play the Switch online. And it's not expensive. Fact.

@dougphisig It's "Where's Nintendo?", you have to look until you find the 1 time I typed it correctly.

@frabbit trust me I hear you. Id love to get more consoles included in this online service but I'm not about to throw in the towel on it. I'm happy to dish out 20$ a year for the nes games alone.

@Frendo I hope you are right. I really want them to get it right and I am hopeful they will. We have to wait and see. Take care.

@Yorumi That's fair enough, you obviously know your stuff about this subject so I don't see anyway I can add any additional info. Yeah, the Splatoon 2 and Pokemon Switch situations are laughable, I honestly can't see how anyone could defend those actions. I'm hoping Nintendo give more reasons why this online service is worth your time (besides having the option to continue playing Splatoon 2 online but I know that's a very controversial reason to pay for the service) but at this point I'm not getting my hopes up and this is coming from someone who tries to remain relatively optimistic at all times.

So basically another meh Direct.

An online service without the top online games or basic features and info on what NES games you get.

If they announce 1 NEW big multiplayer game and they trashing the stupid phone chat app - I'll give it to them. Not holding my breath.

I’m not expecting anything beyond what they’ve announced already for this service, which is pretty underwhelming.

@NewAdvent Yeah, I think the Switch's Online Service is better than most subscription methods PC games do.

The PC has its flaws and stuff. So consoles are argubaly better than PC gaming.

@rjejr Maybe in the direct they will announce a better name

@Yorumi you bring up valid points but for someone like me who used to spend $50-60/year on xbox360 and ps4 only to play Madden or cod, $20 a year is a breath of fresh air. I'll admit I probably wasn't using those services to the best of their ability with free downloads and such but still. I'm buying the online service for these reasons..

i play splatoon far too much and now that they're charging I have no choice but to pay. Which i can live with.
They're planning on offering discounts on select games which alone can make up for that $20/year.
Lastly and most important to me, they're offering nes games to play at anytime without having to repurchase them again.
I understand the service wont be for everyone, but to me, it'll be just fine.

@Yorumi Some of us want to keep playing Splatoon online... Did you think Nintendo was a democracy when you bought the console? It's a business.

The Nintendo online service would be better received if the free games were from multiple retro systems and not just the NES. I love the NES to this day, but it's so overdone and played out, and people in general aren't into NES games like they were in the GCN/Wii era.

If say, Kirby Super Star, Mario Party 2, or F-Zero GX were games included in that list, those would collectively be a MUCH bigger incentive than 1985 NES Soccer and Mario Bros. arcade.

@Mando44646 it already does, it has Splatoon2, and soon to be Smash Bros. online. PS3 didn't have anything that good.

Great news!! I can't wait to play NES games with joy con!!

@rjejr
What's a Nintneod Switch?

@chardir Well they have to announce something new, everything else has already been announced, so I'll take it.

They should call it "Nintendo Free-to-Start-for-7-Days Online".

In case you are new here.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/here-s-why-nintendo-s-ceo-dislikes-the-term-free-t/1100-6426102/

That's an earlier launch date than I expected. I figured the service would launch at the very end of Spetember.

@Tyranexx Free trial, Visa, Mastercard or Paypal required. The oldest trick in the book. I doubt this will be different. PS+ and XBLG run their free trials the same way.

Wait, do you have an aversion to subscribing to things with valid payment information on file to automatically bill? Ask your doctor about....Payital!

@rjejr It was originally being called Nintendo Online and then Changed in wording at some point. I assume at some point they realized "Should I buy XBLG, PS+, or NO" and "I bought a NO subscription!" was not going to work."

Regardless I'm sure you're happy to know that NSO Launches in the first half of the first half of the second half of September.

@westman98 It's the Chinese knock-off version, only 18000 yuan.

@NEStalgia "first half of the first half of the second half of September."

I wanted to use that joke, I was going to write, "So, it launches in mid-September, not the 2nd half." But then I realized the 19th was technically the 2nd half and I couldn't' come up with a joke after that. They still just should have said mid-September though, 2nd half of September isn't a thing. And they just would have made the mid-September deadline by 1 day like they usually do w/ their windows.

Somebody made that NO apparent to me after I unknowingly made the joke last week. It's a good reason, but still a bad name.

@Alantor28 I'd ignore him if I were you, people like that just seem to think Nintendo has to make things free just because they say they do never mind the fact Nintendo is a business and they can charge for whatever the hell they want.
What makes me laugh is he's made it known he's not going to pay for it and yet everytime a page like this shows, here he is moaning like a kid that didn't get the Christmas Present he wanted.
Just ignore him, he only wants attention and that's why I was more than happy to add him to my ignore list.

@Bunkerneath If you can't afford $20 before getting your paycheck, should you REALLY be spending it on this? I'm not trying to be an ass, I just always have a hard time wrapping my head around these kinds of posts. I just feel that if there's essentially nothing left in your account between paychecks, so that you can't afford something negligible like $20, then this kind of money should be going towards savings or critical essentials. Again, I just really need to understand this.

I know I will get it.
It’s 3 times cheaper than psn but it’s 3 times less value. It’s harder to swallow for people who already have all these nes games or all these nes games on their 3ds so they can already play these anytime anywhere which isn’t anything new really. Most of these are playable on so many different platforms even a Gameboy advance plays all of them

Someone call me negative and insult me I can take it I just finished work

@electrolite77 How is it not good value? 20 NES games with added online functionality. I honestly don't know where you live but what is it you can get for twenty dollars that has you thinking you're entitled to so much more?

i may pay for the services but honestly I never play online. I only access the internet for updates but it’s cheap enough that I’ll get my money’s worth with the games

I'm in it for the NES games and "special offers". Don't care about online multiplayer and cloud saves. If I lost my main BoTW file because my Switch broke I'd happily play through it again. I enjoy replaying games.

@sikthvash Wouldn't saving $5 by purchasing a Family Plan be the equivalent of having a discount for buying two memberships?

@WiteWulf A bait and Switch would require them to have not been saying they were going to be making online require a Subscription from Before the Console Launched.

I don't care about on-line play. I'm thinking about subscribe the service because of the cloud saving and "virtual Console", but offers for prebuying games should be a good plus, even if only for first party. This year we'll have smash and next year fire emblem.

Still wonder if the content was changed after they decided to reschedule. In typical Nintendo fashion, I could see them talk about Mario Party originally, and then a quick 3min direct this week about Online - my thinking that Nintendo ends up still downplaying online. And, given that we mostly know what's going to be covered, and that the direct is only going to be ~35min long, they aren't going to devote a ton of time talking about online. Unless we're wrong about the games that will get covered, but no, they're also going to be talking about 3ds too. So, that still tells me that they're going to give minimal coverage to online. Yup, typical Nintendo. But, maybe I'll be wrong.

Hmmm....for me this translates to: I better play Splatoon 2 as much as possible B4 9/18/18!!!

I am not hype nor excited for this online thing. I will wait for the next Direct to hear more about it but as of now, it is not worth paying this even if it is cheaper than the Xbox and PlayStation.
...and DONT get me started on Nintendo's cloud saving!

Just wait for the poor kids and confused parents when they boot up Splatoon 2, and suddenly they need to pay extra. Nintendo WILL be getting complaints.

@Yorumi We live in a world where people will gladly pay $20 more than the already outrageous $100 game+season pass for games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey for "3 day early access." It's safe to say the war is over and consumers not only lost, but now fight for the enemy.

@NewAdvent You mean the Republic of Samsung, brought to you by South Korea?

Gonna guess the “more information” we’re getting is the other 10 NES titles. Considering I didn’t like them the first time around, these NES titles have 0 value for me. 😪

@NewAdvent Nintendo is not using dedicated servers. Your getting the same online as before but now you pay

@NewAdvent And if by some miracle WoW or FF14 comes to Switch, you're still paying that $15 a month AND a yearly fee to use the online services for the system, so your argument makes zero sense.

@sikthvash same here...I only want 2 accounts

@Yorumi I suggest you buy games on a PS4 or an Xbox1. You seem to hate too much Nintendo.

@NewAdvent @NEStalgia @RedMageLanakyn @Yorumi Genuine question: do you think PS Plus and Xbox Live memberships are worth their cost?

@gcunit PC somehow manages to keep free of these subscription services for basic multiplayer games. (obviously with the exception of mmo's)

@RedMageLanakyn I dont think it works that way. If i remember correctly FFXIV on the ps4 did not require PS Plus

So wait, you could nab the 20 free NES games without paying for anything and be happy with those till a better classic selection comes along, right?

The real problem with paid online is you need to have actual games to justify the price of admission. Despite owning maybe 30 games I only play splatoon 2 online. Perhaps I might play a game of Mario Kart but more likely I just play the computer. Sure the price is cheaper than XBOX but on my XBOX it is the complete opposite. Almost all the games have an online component. I own 10 games and probably 9/10 I play online.

@Yorumi you're missing out.

7 day global testfire? works for me. My body is Direct-ready.

I hope rocket league works online without a subscription

@Yorumi dive.

@NewAdvent yeah I let the PlayStation Plus lapse quite regularly as I pay it monthly but usually tune back in when I see something decent on the free games front that month. Considering picking up an xbox and just going for the Game Pass subscription thingy for a few months to plow through some Halo and that piratey one. My games backlog is ridiculous right now though on all platforms tbh so I may not!

@Yorumi Funny thing is I left PC just when Steam represented something as bad or worse than what MS tried with XB1. Everyone forgets Steam was really awful when they started. They had DRM that made Apple's original iTunes look positively generous. That was before GoG and such.

All that said, I do think there's a gap present in terms of funding online services and continued development of modern games and the average cost to produce them. There is a cost associated with that. Per-game subs like MMOs suck. Loot boxes suck. Microtrans some say they can be good, but I still say they suck. In a sense a platform-wide sub makes some sense in that climate. But I also dislike how it's forced in. Heck enable online but disable voice chat or something, I don't know. In my world voice chat doesn't exist, but I know most people feel that online=telephone service.

@frabbit Keep in mind I have one foot in and one foot out of Yorumi's camp on this. I've argued with him against him many times over the past year, and have also defended him and agreed with him seemingly as often. Ultimately I agree with his overall viewpoint, but also believe he takes it a bit to extreme in not allowing any lenience of certain differences to the PC world. He has many valid points, but there are also valid counter arguments to some of it. (And plenty of invalid counter arguments.)

Now as for PS+/XBLG it depends on how you use it. At face value? No they're not worth $5/mo to just play the games you paid for online. That's absurd. You pay for your own internet, the game purchase pays for the game's TCO to produce and distribute, and the cost of operation and personnel to run online does not cost $5/mo per player to maintain. The "Free" games can be fun, but are hit or miss as to their value (See Destiny 2 on PSN this month. On paper that's a big game. In practice as an MMO you need to be up to date with the latest expansion. The latest expansion requires the two previous expansions. The $40 + $20 expansions are the same cost as the "Legendary" edition that includes all 3 expansions...plus the base game..... So whether it was a monthly freebie or not, playing Destiny 2 will cost you $60 either way. It's a glorified demo. A bunch of free indies doesn't add up to much either, particularly as they sell low to begin with and are going to be pretty niche. But there are winners at times, GoW3, last month, Forza Horizon 2 on XB, etc. Ultimately, the freebies are a lootbox, you don't know what you get for the year until you buy so it may or may not have value. And you don't own them. Instead it's like Netflix but an evil Netflix where your library only includes films that you added during a 30 day window when they were presented 3 at a time, only while your sub is active.

So where those subs actually have value is for frequent digital buyers. The sales that give 10%+ discounts to subscribers mean you can easily more than make that money back if you're buying enough from sales to justify it. On those platforms for the past year I've indeed made my money back. But that may not apply every year. I don't really play online games on PS4. On XBox the only games I really play online are games that should have LAN play so I could play to consoles in one room for co-op (and fortunately Halo MCC, and the Gears of War games now DO support LAN and don't require a sub to play....some of the very few console game to do so), and, games that force you to play in "shared worlds" and make you pay to play in the "shared world" even if you don't actually want to play online (Destiny 2, Anthem, Fallout 76, Forza Horizon 4 (IIRC you can turn off the online and revert to old school AI in that), etc. That's the worst case. You have to pay $60 a year because an otherwise single player game is forcing you to play online and there's a pay wall to do it.

So worth the value if you're saving by shopping their discount club often. Not worth that value otherwise.

@frabbit I think PSPlus is, mainly for the amount of games I receive for the cost. I haven't been subscribed to Xbox live for a few years but the games look equally decent for the price of admission.

@SEGATA_DREAMCAST I guess that was a bad example since I haven't played it in a few years. Either way, you have to pay to play on their servers in their game, regardless of platform. The cost isn't exclusive to PC.

Is nobody else really disturbed by the fact that Nintendo are making us pay for using our own internet server in P2P connections? Like wtf!?
They might be coming out to say they are making dedicated servers so worry not; splatoon online play wont randomly drop, lag in ssbu wont exist!
Doubt it though...

I reserve judgement until tomorrow. Getting worked up without knowing all the details solves nothing. I remember not too long ago everyone was saying "but but but we already know everything about Smash!!!" Smash direct comes out, people suddenly realise they knew nothing about the Smash. Patience is a virtue. Could be a lot more, could be hardly anything.

@Yorumi I largely agree with much of that, but with caveats. Back in the 80's the standard operating principle of business was "Cost + a percentage of profit" The foundatation was always based on charge whatever the cost is plus a generally fixed margin and you earn an honest profit. Sometime in the late 90's into the 00's the standard business school logic turned us into mercantilism and it became "charge the maximum value the market is willing to endure". It's disgusting, it's breaking down civilization entirely, but that is now the guiding light of commerce, like it's 437BC Persia.

To a degree the "norms" gross as they are have to be seen through that light, not just in terms of what we endure but of what shareholders will forcibly demand from companies (remember corporate leaders don't run companies, banks do and install a puppet leader to do their will.)

Now for record profits, a far larger user base is certainly a large contributing faster, but most of that profit is coming from microtransactions in the extreme. In cases like EA the microtrans are worth more than the actual game sales! It tells us nothing about corporate costs, and more about just how stupid consumers are. The other reason these games costs don't seem to show as much expense as you'd think is how much of these games are made by slave labor now. Back in the day it was all staff in Japan, US, UK, FR, DE, etc. Now half the game is shipped to content farms in Russia (if feeling luxurious) and China (if not.) The average Chinese content farm consists of row after row of virtual slave labor and one or two American/European/Japanese overseers to monitor them. (Japan does this less than the West though.) So they cut the rising cost by using ever more labor exploitation of the "developing world" same as hard manufacturing. Costs are still likely way higher than they used to be, but then they make it up 10fold with monetization schemes. EA also helps its record profits by (admittedly) spending very little on their annual rehashes of sports games, and cutting their license partners out of the action (FIFA isn't happy....can't imagine Disney's happy either.) So games cost more than ever to make, but EA's record profits come largely from (as they somewhat admitted) not actually making games but just rejiggering old ones and selling them and lootboxes as new.

Ubi meanwhile is crowdsourcing BG&E2 assets.....

Yes the graphics first is self inflicted, but now the audience they built demands it. Latest surveys showing that's the #1 criteria for buying games. Heck even I"m guilty. Crash is on the same sale Switch and X1 this week. It looks so pretty on X1X. I might bite there.

Nintendo made profits on WiiU hardware. We don't know per-game, but I suspect they took heavy losses on games (temporarily, they made it up on rereleases of them during swtich so it was just investment more than losses.) But 3DS was so darn successful they were still in the black except for a few times. But Nintendo doesn't spend without cause.

I'm not sure if I'd say "consoles are monopolies", rather PS and XBox are just different PC platforms at this point. Like Apple. And I'm not sure I'd say PC is all happiness and roses. Hardware and energy costs can be factored in (how many consoles need a 750W PSU?) Sales don't actually seem much cheaper to me on retail games (launch price is cheaper though), but I do wonder how all the support for all the builds of PC really factors into costs. That can't be cheap. It has to be worse than console.

In Nintendo's case, paying to get the same mediocre service sounds bad. OTOH $1.60/mo for cloud saves, a cloud VC sub, and maybe sales doesn't sound like a terrible proposition even if online weren't trapped in it.

Frankly they could charge me $60 a year if they let me play my games on my other Switch

@Nincompoop Plus the extra trial week.

@RedMageLanakyn I never said it was. But wasnt your comment referring to having to pay for a game subscription plus a console online multiplayer subscription? I was merely saying that in the case of FFXIV if you pay for FFXIV's subscription you dont have to have PS Plus to play it.

Pretty sure most people's home broadband & line rental and/or mobile phone contracts, are more expensive per month, than Nintendo online is per year, so please stop the moaning about the price.

@KcebEnyaw Aye, it works out cheaper than two individual purchases, but I just wish they had another tier for a pair, y'know? Might be a good idea to just dish out the rest of the online subscriptions to friends I guess.

@Yorumi I recall a few years ago one of the Assassin's Creed producers saying that the budgets of all these games can't be sustained forever and that the real future for AAA publishers is cutting back and producing only a few games but making them really big.

They all did that. It's working very well for EA....but it's not working so well for Ubi who seems to be backtracking and taking on smaller projects again. Now they think the future is streaming. Who wants to bet it works for EA and not for Ubi?

Though the cost of most of these games is probably 30% development, 70% marketing and relationship management and legal. So 5 big games that costs quadruple all the others saves a lot of money on 20 games of marketing, relationship management, and legal, I'm betting. Heck in the 80's you didn't have entire buildings of lawyers for all this stuff.

@sikthvash I'm still holding out hope for the Family Plan to allow Game Sharing. That will be all the extra incentive I need. It's a long shot, but I guess we'll know tomorrow.

I could see how a 2 Member Plan could be Popular though.

I love Nintendo but playing NES games again leaves me cold. They should have rolled out the GameCube classics at the launch of the online subscription then nobody could complain.

Whinewhinewhinewhine...

Sigh... Whether this is value for you or not is your subjective opinion.

Like it, subscribe! Don't like it, don't subscribe! It is how it is now. Nintendo probably won't change their minds and you can decide to support it or not.

Of course I'm not overly positive to this either, but it's naive to think that Nintendo wouldn't go the same route as the other companies. And the service will probably be more fleshed out as time goes by.

For me, the money is not a big deal. I don't play online that much, but I enjoy Mario Kart and Splatoon 2, so will probably subscribe.

Wouldn't be surprised that it was planned to be 2 directs a week apart, 1 for games and 1 for online. They have removed the games content already announced since the delay and combined the 2 into one direct maintaining the 35 mins air time.

Possibly a different way of looking at it but my decision to sign up is that I earn more per hour at work than the cost of a year's subscription. I'm guessing I will easily get more than an hour's entertainment value out of my subscription over 12 months even going into this with minimal interest. One hour of graft to get 1+ hours of entertainment. The numbers stack up for me but appreciate everyone is different. No complaints here.

@frabbit I don't own either of the competitors' consoles, and can confirm their online services blow Nintendo's out of the water by default.

"But you get twenty 30-some-odd year old games."

Well, stick a spoon in my rear end and call it a steal. Or, don't do either of those things, 'cause they're both not right.

Both Sony and Microsoft regularly give out games that are actually worth playing, and aren't approaching 4 decades old.

"But you get the privilege to play online."

Well, golly, you mean like Switch users were doing with the meager handful of games that were designed to support it and couldn't stand on their own without it? I hope the experience was better than when it was free, 'cause that was a bit embarrassing nearly 1/3 of the time.

I'll stick by my lonesome self and enjoy playing Gamecube games on my Switch.

Y'all have fun with Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Smash when it comes out. Maybe there will be some other games, too. Oh, snap, wait, them NES games have multiplayer?

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"Cloud saving!"

...that isn't available across the board, will not always be available or accessible by the end-user, and has already been handled better by hackers. "...neat."

"The online service is cheap."

And stabbing yourself in the leg is free if you've already got a knife, my guy.
I'm not saying this is "expensive," I'm saying it's lacking in value.

If Nintendo wants to do better, they need to do better. Tryna ride the nostalgia wave isn't entirely frowned upon when you've got a legacy like they do, but... they can't ride that wave forever.

@Yorumi I am with you all the way, I have no idea why people would defend this. Just because Sony and Microsft rips you off, doesn't mean you have to acept it from Nintendo, Steam is a thing, and if they did the same, people would complain too, or just start pirating. It's anti consumer, you hurt yourself in the long run.

My godness, we all gonna see tomorrow who's wrong and who's right. The fight in the comment is just horrible. So much negativity. I trust Nintendo since 1997 and I don't think it's gonna change tomorrow.

Maybe was said already... "We will introduce more information during the #NintendoDirect on 14/09." Isn't the Direct on the 13th?

@KcebEnyaw a family shared library akin to what you can do on Steam would be great, but I doubt they'd offer it across the board. Maybe a select few games like Super Mario Party would be a great to offer in a shared library, even with reduced functionality like the download play option for DS / 3DS games. Just over 24 hours to wait!

@Tarolusa I feel ya. I will pay for online just for Splatoon. It is something special and I am hopelessly addicted. I'm hoping that they maybe still put out some new DLC for MK8D as that would get me racing a lot online again as well.

@sikthvash still cheaper than 2memberships. Who cares if it allows more? Just take the savings and forget how many you “can” have.

@NewAdvent That's not even a relevant statement given that MMOs are the only PC games that require a subscription. Also people miss the point that locking multiplayer for all games behind a subscription is just a bad thing for gamers in general. You could be paying 1 cent and it would still be awful. This is a matter of principal. It's not something you should have to pay extra for in most cases.

@SEGATA_DREAMCAST Yeah, sorry I didn't mean to reply directly to you about that, I was making my original comment based on what the other person had said about sub based games and such, apologies.

@Duncanballs exactly that - I can spend that on a round of drinks in my lunch break. It's only games at the end of the day but well, crybabies are gonna cry.

@BinaryFragger You did not get my point. I am not defending this business, doesn't matter if it is Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft. It's "evil" from whoever does it.

Edit: I am well aware people are defending only Nintendo here.

@RaphaBoss PC fanboys and fangirls like you and Yorumi are the worst...

Man, I better get in some more free online games of Splatoon 2. That is the reason I bought a Switch as early as I did, but I haven't played online in forever.

@Alantor28 Whats wrong with liking the superior pc?

@SEGATA_DREAMCAST Another PC fanboy, I see? This is why I hate PC fanboys. They brag about how PC is superior and they have better games than consoles. They make me sick.

PC fanboys are nothing more but outcasts and trolls. The PC is not superior, it has its flaws and it's filled with idiotic PC fanboys.

@ilikeike I prefer, give me a reason, NOT to be excited.

@Alantor28 PC is easily the best gaming platform, and moronic idiots exist on all platforms, but yet, this person is a waste of your breath. That said, I own 90 Switch games, so, no need to convince me of it's awesomeness.

@Alantor28 huh...sorry, but where did you read I am a pc fanboy? You can't just assume that someome with a Nintendo character as avatar is a pc fanboy just for defending their business. I will take that as a troll, have a good day.

@Yorumi You might find laughable Nintendo’s reasons for not offering cloud saves for Splatoon and Pokémon, but those are very valid and concerning reasons nonetheless.

I can’t say I agree (or even care) about those game not supporting cloud saves but there’s no denying that Nintendo’s reasons are very valid. I’ll blame cheaters instead of Nintendo.

And so the Prophecy Has been fulfilled!!! By Nintendo.....You Shall Not Pass!!!!!! If you don't have an online membership to play Multiplayer Games Lol.

I’m going to wait to judge the Nintendo Online Service until tomorrow. I’d be happy if Nintendo releases plans for games from consoles beyond the NES, at least one more big feature that I would use, or even third party NES games.

EDIT:I’d also like to be able to keep the games even after the subscription times out

@Spectra I'm in the same boat. The only reason I would consider paying for switch online would be to play mhgu. I mostly play solo anyway though, so I'll probably pass, unless they announce something we don't know about yet that actually offers something of value, and not just paying for the privilege of using the internet service that I already paid for.

No need to talk me into it. I will be buying into the year sub right away. 20 dollars a year is more than reasonable. Millions of people are willing to pay 20 bucks on DLC and micro-transactions in individual games. I think once people get over their initial complaints, they will buy in and forget about it.

For the handful of people that never play online anyway, why do you care?

Netflix and Spotify have one month free trial, Apple music had three months, just saying...

I just got here. Is it too late to throw a temper tantrum about a video game?

Hoping it does poorly as to make Nintendo go back to the drawing board and have it catch up to where Xbox and PlayStation is at. The price is better than the others, but if it offers nothing, its a waste of money.

No thank you, Nintendo. I'll put that $20 a year to use getting Amiibo instead. I've only got Luigi, Wii Fit Trainer, Alm, Celica, Pearl, Marina, Pichu, and K. Rool to go!

Well....I'll take the free 7 Days and then see where we sit. I'll get the Family Package eventually but if I can push it off 7 days for free and then maybe a few more school days where it isn't needed then my 1st year payment will last a little longer

There is so misinformation about how online services work. Either pay it or not.

@OorWullie right smack dab in the middle of my game art class for me. Mabey I can put an ear bud in and listen to the details while doing some concept art

IMO Nintendo Online should be delayed for two major reasons:

1. Insert cloud saves for Splatoon 2. Savescumming does NOT exist, you paranoid schizos. Get over it.

2. PERMABAN THE TRYHARDS, CHEATERS THAT AUTOAIM AND HACK EVERYTHING FROM THEIR SCORE TO THEIR GEAR WITH A BETTER ANTI-CHEAT IMPLEMENTATION THAN THE CURRENT GARBAGE ONE. This is a MAJOR problem, even with the prominent folks who do this.

@Heavyarms55 I would probably go for it if they offered a wider selection of retro games from nes, snes, gba, n64 and would even pay more for game cube, but most of the nes games they are offering I wouldn't bother playing even if they were free.

Worst. Birthday Present. Ever.

@OctoInk20 PUTTING ALL CAPS IN BOLD MAKES US THINK YOU ARE SCREAMING YOUR MESSAGE

So please, don't.

Since a lot of people don't know why Nintendo has literally the right to charge people for their game services (aside from that they own ofcourse the game and their rights), I'll explain servers and game services.

So generally we have two kind of servers: peer to peer and dedicated servers. Dedicated servers are servers which are hosted by a computer who doesn't partake in the game. There can be a player who can adjust the server settings, but that's it.

Then we have peer to peer (which Nintendo uses), which also has two forms. One is where one player hosts the server, while partaking in a game. The other players connect to that player.
The other is called a mesh, where every player (peers) send out information to eachother, but also receive.

It make sense that dedicated servers cost money, while peer to peer servers doesn't (since the servers are then hosted by players).

HOWEVER, there is more. There needs to be a way that these players are being grouped up, there IP adress needs to be shared, their needs to be (fair and equal) matchmaking, leaderboards, player progress, and more. All these kind of services are being run by Nintendo.

So yes, while the servers may be free, Nintendo her services isn't.

@mj2k18 I'm not really being serious, I have a savings account and a bills account which always has money in for proper things. Its just disposable money I don't have

@Dysnomia don't worry, I will be doing as I have no choice heh! It's just shame that one membership doesn't cover all users on one console as it's just my Daughter & I who primarily use it for Splatoon 2. Hey ho!

Excited to see what "virtual console" they will have at launch plus what is forthcoming between next week and holiday.

@sanderev I'll say what's on my mind however I want.

Don't like it? Tough luck, find some other platform to be on. :I

@Alantor28 You do know that a console is just a slightly above average PC with a custom OS and bios dont you? The only difference is that a console is locked to doing one thing, while a PC can do anything your imagination can conjure. ♪♪ Peeeeeceeeee Maaaaaaaster Race. Peeeeceeeeeee Maaaaaaster Raaaaaaaaace ♪♪

@electrolite77

"FAO every idiot saying “but it’s cheap”. That doesn’t mean it’s good, or that it’s good value."

Hahahahahahaha.... Ahahahahaha.... Stops laughing and chuckles for a bit before looking at you with a not impressed expression.

You're pathetic, man. You claimed that Nintendo is an ultra agressive money hogging control freak of a company in a previous article and I (and possbily others who may agree with me) find that laughable.

Seriously, chill out and get some food to eat instead and whining and complaining about how unfair life is.

@SEGATA_DREAMCAST More PC fanboy idioicy. You PC fanboys make me sick.

That's why you'll always be at the bottom of the barrel while defending that not so flawless PC thing and keep spewing stupid crud like PC is master race. You PC fanboys are considered the laughing stocks of the gaming community and will always be outcasts.

@Alantor28 meh, i think your trying too hard. Kinda losing the serious vibe we had going on. your last comment was a bit over the top. Sorry, im just not feeling it anymore i cant keep this up

@SEGATA_DREAMCAST Good, because I'm adding you to my ignore list because you're not worth the effort and just a waste of my time.

@electrolite77 No, that's just your opinion. Nothing more.

In europe Finland its already here it downloads new app for nes games after payeed sub.