What do you think of the $19.99 pricing for annual online? (Coming in 2018)

Sorry if there was already a thread about it; I am posting this on the Switch forums and didn't see one there. My brother texted me earlier saying he believes his wife is getting him a Switch for his birthday, and my thought was that we should both get Mario Kart 8 Delux if that's true. First I'd have to get a Switch as well, and I am not a huge player of online games or even Mario Kart, but I would enjoy playing Mario Kart 8 Delux online with him. It then occurred to me that we're going to have to start paying for online play eventually, and again, felt that that sucks, but now that I am seeing the price, that's not too bad. Is the online portion something you feel is worth it?

Nintendo site showing prices and what have you.

I probably wouldn't pay for online myself. I've only done it for Xbox Live on the 360 for perhaps two or three years since you needed it to play online; this is when I played online a bit, and then stopped since I don't play games online. On PS4 and Xbox One I can play because I use the same console as my other brother and he just sets his profile to the main one, so I have all the stuff he has: play online, able to play the free games. I'm glad Sony and Microsoft weren't so stingy and did that. I would hope Nintendo would go the same route, but I am doubting that will be the case. While I believe twenty dollars is a good deal to play games online compared to Xbox One and PS4, some of the ways they're going about it all doesn't seem good.

It's hard to justify it right now with how little online titles they have. It will be a major limiter of the splatoon 2 player base as well which is a shame.

Seems like a reasonable price, if they are able to offer competent online service (remains to be seen) I have zero problems paying that much for it.

Screw you, Microsoft.

Screw you, Sony.

Screw you, Nintendo.

I should be able to fully play the games I already paid for. I'm not accepting it at any price.

Well its much cheaper than the others but without many multiplayer games i dont know what the point will be.

$20 is a trivial amount per year (less than $2 a month) and unlike others I don't resent paying for server maintenance if the quality is good. That being said, Nintendo's "solution" for voice chat looks terrible (need to have a complicated set up and a direct attachment to the console if you want game and voice chat audio mixed? WTF? This is coming in 2018, so 5 years after 2013 launch of XBONE and PS4, let ALONE Xbox 360 and PS3.)

Nintendo also doesn't have a good track record with online service, though Mario Kart seems fine and the ARMS test punch has also worked decently.

I'm curious to see what the classic game offering will be, though discouraged that they're "considering" Super Nintendo.

Overall it's so cheap that I don't really mind. I just wish Nintendo was a more modern company.

I'm pissed. I'll pay it but I'm pissed I have to.

It's cheap. Whatever. Just wish it was all on the console.

I already don't like paying for PS plus to play online/little extra value (since the free games aren't usually my thing). The challenge is what additional value we'll actually get. Access to NES games I already have and likely held not 24 hours ago isn't gonna cut it, especially since the VC is MIA at this point. Even eShop deals are gonna need to be pretty dang good (like what Sony offers) for me to consider.

It's the right price point all things considered (if it was higher I'd already be skipping the service), but the real test is if there's more than Mario Kart, ARMS, and Splatoon 2 that use online.

The thing that stinks most is these pay for online services really bite for someone with multiple current gen systems (PS4 and Switch) because it just starts to add up.

Nintendo obviously priced it to be the 2nd paid online service that most people will have on top of either Xbox Live or PS+. Smart move.

no one's going to like it since it's mostly charging for something that was free before.

i've never really had problems with nintendo's online gameplay but if this helps improve things more then good. im glad its also more of a psplus like free game system (even though theyre old games, which are scientifically the best games).

the phone stuff seems quite awkward though. ill wait to see how its implemented.

@ripelivejam: people thought the same with Sony moving from PS3 to PS4 and look at how many millions of subscribers they have.

@oscar__explosion: yeah i said it more out of snark than anything, though there's always a good deal of negativity towards nintendo with most of their decisions. but they have gone the longest without a paid service so it may take some convincing to make people shell out. the lower price point will help, though, as well as the switch being so popular to begin with. if the free games extend past NES titles that would also be a bonus.

nintendo needs a good roster of games first before they can justify charging any price...

It's $10 for just a month of PS Plus, so $20 for a year of Netflix style Nintendo games? Count me in.

I have no problem with the service at that price, but I probably won't play online. If the discounts offered totalled close to $20 annually, then I would subscribe just for that.

They still need to get some basic stuff, like cloud saves, in order before I'd be interested in paying for a Switch or its services.

I rarely play online. I have PS plus mostly for the free games and discounts. If I get a switch I don't know if I would pay for online. Depends on the games it includes. Not if it is just NES and SNES. I am not paying that much for what is basically a handheld console. The price here is 3599kr (about 360 euro) and you can get a PS4 slim for 1999kr. I might get one if they slash the price in half to make it more in line with what I paid for my Vita. The Switch might in time become a Vita replacement.

If they make a new monster hunter for switch i will be pissed i have to pay to play online.

It was free on 3DS

It`s 60 bucks for a year of PS plus which is a more fair comparison.

I think they have to be so much cheaper than the competition just because they are offering so much less. One thing is that as others have mentioned Nintendo just don`t have that many online focused games (though they seem) to be getting more. Another thing is that their free games initiative is kinda crap in comparison to the others. On both Xbox and Playstation you are getting two - six current and last gen games per month depending on how many of the systems you own and you get to own them as long as your subscription lasts. Nintendo are offering one SNES game for a single month. There is also the fact that Nintendo is traditionally terrible with online features and if the way they are handling party chat and friends are any indication they are not getting better.

We will have to wait and see how things work out, but IMO 20$ is the most they can charge with what they are offering and depending on how things shake out it might even be too much.

$19.99 is $19.99 too much. Nintendo's old, old games should be complimentary with the system. It would also serve as a nice incentive to buy the Switch.

I would say that Nintendo is taking a pretty hard turn into online focused gaming recently. Sure Zelda and Mario don't have online features (though who knows, Mario might have some) but what are their other big games right now? Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, Splatoon, Mario Maker and now Arms? Those are all extremely online focused games. Add in the inevitable Animal Crossing and Pokemon games and you have a large portion of their games online. Heck even Metroid and Zelda have gone online recently (with not great results.)

I actually think that arguably MORE of Nintendo's library is online focused these days than those of their competitors. The big PS4 games recently, Nier, Gravity Rush 2, Horizon: Zero Dawn and Yakuza 0 did not have an online focus. Nioh had some, but not nearly as much as Splatoon or Mario Maker. Xbox is more online focused with games like Forza, Halo and Gears, but a lot of their "experimental" games like Quantum Break and ReCore didn't really have online features.

The main difference, frankly, is the Multiplats. Nintendo doesn't have Call of Duty or The Division or Overwatch on their system, so that reduces the online value, but it's not like they have a ton of third party single-player games either. I would say Nintendo just has fewer games than the competition, but of those games arguably a greater proportion are online.

I think they still need to make a case for buying a Switch before convincing me I should pay to play Switch games online.

Considering it's way cheaper than the other consoles, I'm fine with that. With that being said, I hardly ever play console games online so I probably won't buy their online service just like I don't buy PSN+. A good selection of old games that I like would be the only thing that gets me to pay.

I'm paying like forty bucks for Xbox live without actually ever playing online or the games with gold stuff, so twenty bucks for classic Nintendo games for free seems like a freaking bargain to me. I'll cancel the shit out of XBL for that.

@odinsmana: From what I understand, the Xbox One Games for Gold, they last past the subscription (so you could cancel your membership and still play those games you got for free), while on PS4 you still need to have Plus, just for clarification.

I probably won't buy it, but I am happy I get free online til 2018. I'm gonna get into as many online Mario Kart Battles as I possibly can. If they do want me to buy it, they better put out a killer online game that forces me. Then again, I hate the idea of paying online anywhere so it's gonna have to be pretty dang awesome.

I really wish they would let you just port the VC games you already own over, but I mean it could be worse. I'll probly sub if it stays at it's current price. It's similar to what people wanted, but with a nintendo like solution.

@geirr: The way the system is currently selling, they don't really need to provide that type of incentive for people to buy a Switch.

This image has me concerned. If voice chat requires a wired connection to both the Switch and to a phone, I have to wonder how well considered the rest of the online system is. Not sure I can say much more than "I'll wait and see" at this point.

To clarify the clarification, you keep the 360 games, but XB1 GwG require an active Gold subscription.

Paying for online is fine. You're not "paying to use your own internet." The infrastructure costs don't start and end with your ISP and their network/uplink costs. Nintendo has to maintain physical servers to handle matchmaking and (assuming the game isn't totally P2P) hosting and various synchronization issues as well as account services, they need to invest in network security and stability to keep the service robust and resilient against (most) DDoS attacks and prevent compromising your data or anything else nasty happening, they need QA and maintenance to fix bugs and improve scalability and possibly introduce new features to improve your experience, and they really should put money into some sort of moderation presence on their networks so that assholes don't make your experience miserable. All of that for $20/year sounds pretty good to me.

That's all off the top of my head, as a relative outsider with basically no privileged knowledge about how to operate an online service for a game or a platform. This shit should just be obvious, but so many gamers insist on being children and plugging their ears and pretending that things don't cost money. Publishers used to be able to offer this stuff as a value-add because games were cheaper to make and nearly nobody played online and they frankly didn't care if your experience was shit. Times have changed. Cough up or stay offline.

@stordoff: Aw, so it is like PS4.

OK, thanks for the update! I don`t have an XBONE so I just assumed it was the same as PS plus. It seems it`s a bit different (I don`t think you get to keep PS3 or Vita games permanently on PS plus).

@odinsmana: Yeah, you don't. It's a bit of a bummer in my opinion, not just because you don't get to keep the game, but because as an example, I bought the Outlast DLC Whistleblower when that came out since I enjoyed Outlast enough to see what else there is to offer in that universe but got Outlast as a free download when it was a Plus game, so if no one (my brother or I) has Plus, I won't get to play the add-on either since it needs the main game. It's not that I planned on playing Whistleblower again, but still.

@stordoff said:

This image has me concerned. If voice chat requires a wired connection to both the Switch and to a phone, I have to wonder how well considered the rest of the online system is. Not sure I can say much more than "I'll wait and see" at this point.

Is this a real thing? Because i want to know how much the guy at Nintendo, whose sole purpose and job is to fuck shit up as much as he can, gets paid. Because god damn does he earn it. I have to assume this setup is for getting BOTH the game and voice chat in one headset, voice chat ALONE you just need the phone. But the fact that the Switch cant handle the online functions of a console released in 1999 in 2017 natively without a smart phone is god damn astonishing.

The phone app should be an added benefit to keep in touch like with PSN or XBL, not the main source of the online functions.

Strictly speaking, it's an image from Hori, not Nintendo itself, so they in theory could have a more elegant solution, but I can't imagine a hardware partner (it's a Splatoon-branded headset) would go with something so asinine if Nintendo had a better way.

You're right that for just voice chat (no game audio) you just need the phone, but that's still not a good solution IMO:

Nintendo’s proposed voice chat system for the Switch is all localized on an app, not on the console itself. In other words: For Splatoon 2 trash talking, you’ll have to have your cell phone handy. [...] All of this is really only a problem if you want to have game audio and voice chat sound in your ears at the same time. For those who don’t, the option to just plug earphones into a cell phone to access the online app is still there, no dual-cabled headset needed.

Am I paying $20 a month for Nintendo's shitty implementation of a modern online service, complete with friend codes and other assorted bullshit. No

Will I pay $20 a month to have full access to the entire Virtual Console Library. Hell yes.

But seeing as they haven't outright said what games you get access to, I'm gonna moderate my expectations. Worst case scenario they drip feed us a couple retro games a month mimicking PS plus and Xbox Gold. In that scenario, it'd take a couple years before the library grew large enough to be worth $20/month.

They said there's going to be a constantly expanding library of virtual console games with added online support you're going to get access to through your subscription (replacing that originally announced one game a month bullshit), so that + being able to play stuff online is worth $20 a year for me.

@qrowdyy: $20 per year. With that in mind, know that you will likely never have unfettered access to a sizeable chunk of the VC library, just a few bits n' bobs.

@fnrslvr: Well said.

I may not play online on my Switch ever. But $20 a year with the classic games included isn't bad, I'm not mad about it.

The idea that people are still complaining about something that costs less than 2 dollars a month is baffling.

@whitegreyblack: Sizeable chunk? I thought it was one free SNES game a month, that you have to pay for at the end of the month? Honestly the twenty dollars isn't the problem for me, it's the lame functionality.

@ungodly: No, not a sizeable chunk. Like it says in my post.

It didn't take long for people to accept Sony and MS asking for payment. But really it depends on what's on offer. We don't know the details of the online service just yet.

I used XBLG and PSN+ exclusively to play games online. I didn't care for the free games cause I'd already have those or just didn't want them. I didn't care for the community features because I don't have friends on those services. So for me personally even if it's just online play for only $20 per year that is a better deal already. The VC games might make me feel OK about it... We still don't know the details.

If the online communication is supposed to work as we think it is, then that is some steps ahead of XBLG/PSN+ I can have friends on the system that can set appointments to play with me and I don't need to turn on the Switch to see them? That's pretty good. Still I don't know that I would use it. But I could see that become very popular.

It will be a cold day in hell before you see me paying money for Nintendo's online *anything*

Well, here's a few questions. Will I never have to use or see or think about a friend code ever again? (Y/N) Is your online infrastructure nearly as good as XBL or even ffs PSN? (Y/N) Can I hope to join my friends party and go into matchmaking together like every modern MP game since uh Halo 2? (Y/N)

If the answer to any of these questions is no, you need to rethink things Nintendo

I haven't enjoyed playing any Nintendo games online so far, and most of the games I would want to have online just don't. If they announce online capabilities for at least some Virtual Console games I might be interested, but I don't know about their other games.

Splatoon had the problem of nobody really playing it outside of Japan after a few months, so all the matches were laggy as all hell. Between that, the lack of a unified party system before you go into matchmaking, and the lack of voice chat, I really didn't see the appeal of the game. It was a great idea, and the 2 splatfests I did were fun, but I have so many online shooters on my PC that are far better games, and you can actually talk to your team about strategy! I can't imagine paying 20 dollars for the few times I might play it with my wife.

Maybe they'll announce something cool in the E3 Direct that seems worth playing online. After all these years of waiting for Nintendo to get completely on board with online gaming, I just don't expect it at all anymore. That said, I've just stopped looking for that in Nintendo games. They make amazing singleplayer games, some of the best in the business, and that's all they really need to do for me. I'll get my online elsewhere.

All of my online gaming right now is on PC. (Overwatch, PUBG, etc.) I really like how PlayStation+ works, but I let mine run out this year. I'm not into Injustice 2, so the only console exclusive I would play online is The Show 17 and their servers have been hot trash.

I never played the first Splatoon, so I'm excited to give the sequel a shot. It really comes down to them offering online content/game experiences that I can't get any other way.