I don't like ragging on Nintendo, especially in a year when they launched one of my favorite games of all time, but it is mind boggling how their terrible chat app solution has been met with, if not a shrug, at least an understated eye roll and an "oh Nintendo" sigh.

Having to use your smartphone to manage your chat is much worse than what Microsoft was doing in 2002 with Xbox Live (that's right, 15 years ago, which in tech terms is one billion years ago.) Having an app that can't run in the background or when your phone's screen is off just feels like an insult.

That's not even getting into the fact that unless you buy a special connector you can't get game audio and voice chat out of the same headset. In 2017. That's right 2017. 2017, people. 2017.

Now people argue that it's not so bad because the service is free, while the other consoles charge for online, but $60 a year is not a lot (about half of one month's cable bill for people who still have cable) and comes with other benefits, and I would much rather pay for a functional service than get a completely non-functional service for free.

More importantly, Nintendo should get zero credit for the fact that it's still early in the Switch's lifecycle. Xbox 360 and PS3 launched with better chat solutions over 10 years ago, and Xbox One and PS4 both launched with fully featured online suites. My understanding is that even the Wii U launched with somewhat functional voice chat.

And Nintendo's games lineup so far is ONLINE FOCUSED. Other than Zelda their big releases are Mario Kart 8, Arms, and Splatoon 2, all of which are meant to be played primarily online. Mario Kart 8 has the largest single player component, and the Switch version is definitely not focused on that since it has Diddy Kong Racing story mode, no Mario Kart DS style challenge mode, and all the characters are unlocked from the start.

Arms has basically no single player content (yet it is given a pass while a game like Tekken 7 that has a story mode AND an extensive treasure box mode gets flack) and Splatoon 2 has a small campaign but is obviously primarily an online experience.

People were already mad when Titanfall was online only, but imagine how they would have reacted if Xbox One's online had totally broken chat when it launched. There would have been XBONEs burned in the street.

Nintendo makes great games (for the most part, I think I kind of hate Arms, online or no.) I like the Switch as a piece of hardware and I think it has a lot of smart design decisions. But the totally gimped online is an absolute scandal. The fact that saves are still locked to the system is a complete scandal (I know someone who lost his system and his 75 hour Zelda save along with it.) The fact that Nintendo abandoned Virtual Console in order to put out a bunch of cute mini hardware I don't really want but couldn't get anyway because their supply department is literally just a monkey with a mood disorder is a scandal.

Being a Nintendo fan forces you into a constant state of cognitive dissonance. You love and celebrate their amazing games while gritting your teeth through their absolutely awful decision making and various forms of consumer contempt. It often feels like going to a high end restaurant where the food is great but the chef is an absolute lunatic and you have to put up with whatever crazy decisions he has, along with terrible decor, long lines, and awful service. But Nintendo is not a great but quirky restaurant. It is a huge multi-national company competing in a field where every single company it competes with has solved basically all the problems it struggles with, and solved them many years ago. It's as if Reebok was still struggling with reliably making shoelaces, or Ford was having a terrible time putting basic audio jacks into their cars. In 2017.

And yet we all just kind of put up with it with a minor article here or there noting "Heads up, Switch's online chat is completely broken and designed by some kind of hateful alien. But you expected that already."

It deserves a lot more scorn and attention than that.

Ok. Feels good to get that off my chest. Now cue the Nintendo apologists saying things like "who needs voice chat when you have Discord" or "I can just use my PS4 for party chat while I play my Switch" or, my favorite "Who needs voice chat at all?"

Once again, imagine this was a car with no solution for plugging your iPhone in. Would you be saying "I can just bring a bluetooth speaker with me!" or "Who needs audio in a car? I prefer to drive in silence!"

Maybe some of you would.

I certainly don't want to communicate to other people online.

And if I did want to talk to friends or teammates there are other solutions for that.

I 100% agree. There are certain things like online Nintendo can apparently get away with being terrible at because people will jut shrug and say "It`s Nintendo, what did you expct?" as if that absolves Nintendo of doing a terrible job. It`s espcially baffling because this time it`s not just "not as good as the competition", but so terrible it seems like it was designed by someone who had never seen a video game before.

I feel like Nintendo is kind of in that Fallout 3-era Bethesda area where they can do whatever they want and people will overlook the overall quality to a certain degree because they're doing things nobody else is. "It's Nintendo", "You know what you're getting into", etc.

I don't think they should get a pass, nor will they. But Splatoon is probably not going to be the game to force change.

The solution they have is terrible. They need to fix it. The rubber will probably meet the road in 2018 when they start charging for the online services. That, or when a game that moreso benefits from communication is released.

I just don't think it's that big a deal. Hardly anybody uses voice chat anyway and Nintendo games certainly arnt the type to need it.

I just feel like people have been complaining about Nintendo's approach to the internet for over a decade, and they're probably getting sick of complaining. People just sigh and say, "Ok. I guess this is how its gonna be!"

The PS3 launched without trophies in 2006, after Achievements had only been around a year or so. The Switch launched with no achievement system in 2017, 11 years later (once again, 11 years is literally forever in games. It is the time gap between the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Playstation.) And the Switch will never have an achievement system and that's okay. Achievements are, IMO, less integral to a game system than some kind of online communication.

Nintendo has been doing voice chat since the DS, so this is not even new to them. The Wii U had it. It's not comparable at all.

Also people saying "Nobody uses voice chat" are...wrong? People don't voice chat with strangers these days but I voice chat all the time with friends when I'm playing online co-op or whatever. And Splatoon has a co-op horde mode AND is a team-based shooter so...it's exactly the kind of game that does need voice chat.

Do people really play online games with their friends and not voice chat?

And Nintendo fans wonder why some think they should get out of the hardware business.

I totally agree, although their games for the most part aren't too reliant on voice chat, but it's still a lame excuse for third party games (Monster Hunter for example).

You wrote a lot, and I apologise but I am only going to comment on the title as Ill treat it as a TLDR.

I have no interest in voice chat with anyone other than mates.

That being said, having to use a phone so I don't get to hear the game as well? Complete and utter bollocks. There is so much nostalgia blinding the industry to overlook the shit Nintendo repeatedly spit out.

There getting flak from me in the form of me never considering buying there hardware ever again. Hell the voice chat crap is all fine and good in comparison to the fact that they don't appear to have a simple Nintendo account that ties all you purchases yet. I just watched someone transfer there games from and old 3ds to a "new" 3ds, and the processes was astonishing. So im basically in the crowd of "yeah that's some Nintendo ass shit right there, what you gonna do?", but that's because i really just don't care how astonishingly stupid the things they do anymore are, because i have checked out already an am not going to consider buying it.

If we lived in a world where public online game chat actually mattered I would agree they should get flack. But I feel like they're just the first to acknowledge that people mute the system more often than not, and it's largely a waste of time to include. There are better methods of voice chat out there. Anecdotally, I haven't used in game chat or known anyone using in game chat since the start of the ps3 and 360 era. Everyone used skype or uses discord now. If you ask me they should have skipped their roundabout solution altogheter and said just use your own chat, but it's probably not the right time to do that for everybody.

@lego_my_eggo: At least you sort of get it by voting with your wallet, though I feel that's a little extreme. People should probably go to somewhere or do something more prominent than half hearted grumbling on a forum thread. Something with visibility if they want to effect change. Hell, maybe contact a Kotaku editor to write a piece if you feel that strongly about it. If you're going to take Nintendo to task for something at least do it in a way that matters.

Me, I have never used Nintendo voice chat functionality ever so it doesn't really affect me. I suppose I'm part of the problem but I do agree for once this is a pretty backward implementation of what should be a straightforward thing.

Well first off I have to agree that Nintendo has developed this reputation for getting away with questionable decisions due to their "prestige" in the gaming industry. Now I may not be a huge Nintendo fan like many others here but I certainly haven't ignored them completely and have enjoyed many games from them and their consoles, but I guess due to that I do generally give them a harder time when they are lagging behind the competition in important aspects of gaming today such as online play. I can understand if you've grown up around only Nintendo that you will likely have a certain affinity for the brand and company but past achievements shouldn't give you a free pass for present mistakes.

As for this particular issue, I generally do my voice chat in games with friends on 3rd party chat programs like Skype and Discord. From my past experiences of public voice chat in multiplayer games such as the CoD series usually boils down to 80% of players not using it and the rest either having their mic on and not realizing it resulting in mumbling with the occasional curse or playing loud music through the mic in a bid to be annoying. Of course PlayStation and Xbox have party chat options for your friends and while they work fine for me personally they are just inferior to what you can do with the options on PC. The sound quality is just in my experience a lot better and you have extra features you don't get on console.

I'm not completely naive however, I can understand that using a program on a computer to voice chat for a game on a games console might not be feasible to everyone. For those people who would have to use Nintendo's solution it is pretty bad for them and they really need to do better.

Wrong kind of flak

Also, I 100% agree with you. Nintendo deserves to be raked over the coals for the 10 boneheaded decisions they make per year, but many people handwave it away as 'Oh, it's just Nintendo. What did you expect?' There are a handful of other companies that also seem to get a pass or double standard when being criticized or evaluated (Bethesda, Blizzard, etc.), but Nintendo is by far the worst.

I think Nintendo needs more flak for a lot of different reasons from a lot of different people. Though it doesn't matter for me because I haven't bought a Nintendo product in over a decade, and never will again. So it really doesn't effect me unless they pull another Wii level seismic event on the industry. Most of the bullshit they pull I just chalk up to another move in what I see as an abusive relationship with customers.

I'm not gonna tell anyone else what to be angry about, but personally I'll just use Discord if I want any kind of voice chat like I do on PS4. If anything I'm glad Nintendo did it like this so I don't have to listen to racist tirades come through my speakers like I did on XBox Live...

Does know one use party chat with their friends? Does everyone play online by themselves? I guess I'm sort of confused how saying you don't chat with public lobbies, so not having it is OK.

I play online games. Never voice chat. So there's your answer in the simplest form.

I agree, it should be better. But a good voice chat solution is pretty much the bottom of my list of priorities. Even with online games - the original Splatoon had none and was hugely successful.

I do want to argue against the point that people let things slide for Nintendo - that clearly isn't true. You can look at the large amounts of criticism this has received online, you can look at the failure of the Wii U, any number of things to tell that Nintendo is not immune from criticism. So why isn't the voice chat issue turning people off the Switch? Because a lot of people simply don't care about voice chat, at least not for these games.

Nintendo makes great games, but I have zero interest in their hardware anymore. I had every Nintendo console growing up, but I was done after the Wii. I didn't buy a Wii U and I doubt I'll buy a Switch. They are underpowered machines with bad controllers and terrible online infrastructures. Friends lists, in game chat, online store - all bad.

*gives Nintendo flack*

To be fair, my 370z has no charging port or way to connect my iphone 7 with out an adapter. Sometimes I like less technology in my stuff. More on topic, nintendo has no idea how to internet and they are trying to figure it out. It's stupid the voice chat is the way it is, but I don't play multiplayer games on my switch thinking I'll talk to people and make friends. I got my PC games for that

I do hear a lot of people giving Nintendo flak for this, but maybe my sources of gaming news aren't representative.

Regardless, it still makes sense for them. The switch is going to sell best in Japan. Japan doesn't want voice chat, so it's not a priority. Most players in the west would probably use Discord regardless of what Nintendo provides, so I'd rather see them put resources to fixing the other issues with their online system first.

I just dont understand how Nintendo can so consistently go from doing something amazing to doing something completely shitty. This has been going on since at least the N64 era and it is showing no signs of stopping.

Here's a link to an article basically giving them some flak. It's a good read and outlines the problems with the app mostly when it comes to Splatoon. At the end of the day, vote with your wallet. If they don't fix this crap by the time they start charging for the online, it's up to you if that's crucial enough to drop the service. I never use voice chat, and certainly won't buy some attachment for my phone to use it anyway. But this app seems real bad so far.

Splatoon 2's Grouping and Nintendo Switch Online Voice Chat Are A Big Mess

This sums it up pretty well I think. Nintendo's approach to online features have always been absolutely terrible... I can hardly think of anything they've done right to be honest. I think at this point, most people know that when you get a Nintendo console, the online features are going to be the equivalent of a bag of dog shit.

Some pretty hot takes itt. They deserve criticism, but ire? Acting like the entirety of Nintendo is a dumpster fire is a tad extreme. For me this comes back to everyone either wanting an uber powered nondescript grey box from Nintendo, or to give up and potentially fade into third party obscurity. We don't want anything new or different! I dunno, these threads full of vitriol towards Nintendo are a little common and generall extreme and unfocused.

That said, I do think they could stand to learn some lessons from their competitors for voice chat, not that I'd use it that much anyway. Maybe they see something in this setup the rest of us don't. Nintendo have shown they can budge with their changes to the paid online and no region locking. It's not impossible that they start changing their chat setup, etc.

@bigsocrates I love your rants even if they get a bit hyperbolic and I do sometimes disagree with your opinions like with Shadows of Mordor. Excellent game, despite my dislike for the LotR, released in a lackluster year is all I got to say.

My initial response is its Nintendo what do you expect? Given more thought that is bullshit. They've been having online services since the DS/Wii era, technically earlier if you count their satellite Zelda stuff in Japan and the Gamecube port of Phantasy Star Online, they should have got their shit together. I realize Nintendo sees itself as a kid friendly company and there are legitimate concerns but there is a better solution than friend codes, phone apps, or simply no voice chat. I agree making excuses for Nintendo like you can just get on Discord or what not is dumb. Yeah I too hate voice chat when I'm playing with strangers but not with friends who live across the country. What's wrong with just wanting to use a headset without having to open up my laptop so I can chat with friends while playing an online Nintendo game? What's wrong with thinking it's disgusting that they are going to charge any amount of money for such an ass-backwards online service?

I don't know, it just seems like people who care that much about built-in chat are simply in the minority. There's no denying their "solution" for it sucks. But my impression is most of the people playing their games don't really care, and I doubt it's really impacting their bottom line much. Of course those that do care are free to give Nintendo as much flack as they want, and I'm sure they do.

Also the equation will probably change once online becomes paid.

"deserves a lot more flack" I disagree with, unless you think someone's being suppressed then they pretty much deserve exactly as much criticism as they're getting. Not everything needs to be a bandwagon.

Nintendo gets a pass on a lot of things. I guess they've just lowered the bar so much that when they do something so idiotic like their voice chat "solution" people just shrug and say, "welp, Nintendo gonna Nintendo" or my favorite, "I don't use voice chat anyways" as if that's a reasonable excuse.

I feel like there are more than a few similarities between this and the arguments people were having when the iPhone removed the 3.5mm headphone jack. People were upset, but a lot of them admitted to never using it, and a lot of the flak I saw them getting for it had more to do with how Apple handled the attachment that actually let you use one.

I agree that sounds terrible. I don't say anything though because I haven't owned a Nintendo console since the N64, and I doubt I will again, so I just don't really see it as my business.

And I think the reason a lot of people aren't saying much about the Switch problems is because they don't own one either. The Switch is selling really well, but its not selling nearly as fast the Xbone or PS4 did at launch, and of course its nowhere near their install bases yet. Even though the console looks like a big hit, and it is, the vast majority of gamers aren't affected by Nintendo's decisions and won't be ever/for quite a well. So there's less outcry. To give a comparison, a really big AAA game like Fallout 4, Overwatch, GTAV, etc. sells more copies in its first week than there are total Switch sales so far.

You're not entirely wrong but Nintendo knows most people don't care for in game chat because of its reputation for being toxic. Those who really want to chat with friends will find their own way of making it happen so Nintendo didn't bother spending more on the infrastructure to match PSN or XBL.

Not just that, the games you listed like splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 don't live or die by having voice chat or not. In splatoon you go where there isn't ink and paint, that's it. You also don't need coordinating strategy in Mario Kart.

Is Nintendo's voice chat solution a ham fisted bullshit method? Yeah, but at the same time I'm not missing the feature because I never used it in ps4 or xbox one games either.

Agreed with all of it. Real shitty stuff from Nintendo. But Zelda is one of my favorite games ever so ya....I'm sure the bullshit won't stop for a while.

@fezrock: The Switch is pacing substantially ahead of the Xbox One, worldwide at least. This is despite not launching in a holiday.

As someone that doesn't play online, or at least very little, while I think the way they're doing it might be dumb, I am not in a fit of rage about it. I am also not in a fit of rage about this, but I really am disappointed in the Switch's layout. It's super bare. The Wii U (and the Wii if I remember correctly) had cool little things like telling you how long you played a game and on what dates, so I could go into the menu and see how far back I played on the system and what I played and for how long. This basically just has an unexciting store and no way to communicate with friends, just to add. Oh, and off-topic, but I just finished Breath of the Wild yesterday! Really great game, though perhaps not my favorite game of the year, but in the top five. I did all the shrines and all the side missions except one (a kid wanted me to bring him a bunch of swords, and I accepted that when I was pretty much done with everything.) I don't know how I played Zelda, but I wish I did. The way the Switch works with that is pretty bad. Right now, what I want most is for them really enhance the menu by giving more.

@ntm: If you go to your profile you can see the last 20 or so games you played and a rough approximation of how long you played them. I think it takes 10 days to populate for some INSANE Nintendo reason that makes no sense, but it does exist. I also don't know why you can't go back further than 20 games because I think it still tracks that information, but it's Nintendo. They love making things hard.

@apdls: Xbox One sold 3 million units its first month, Switch sold 2.74 million units. Xbox did have the benefit of a holiday, but it was in far fewer territories than the Switch. And considering the strength of the Switch in Japan (and that Xbox wasn't even in Japan for a year), in the Western media wold, where the flack we mostly pay attention to comes from, the Xbox outpaced the Switch at launch. I think long-term the Switch will out-sell the Xbox One, but it'll be due to a much stronger tail.

But that's irrelevant to my point anyway. Even if there's 5 million Switch units sold by now, GTA V sold 11 million copies within 24 hours and Overwatch sold 7 million copies within a week. The really big games have a much bigger footprint than the Switch does so far, which is why the outcry over other game company screwups is bigger than the flack Nintendo gets. When there's 20+ million plus Switch units sold, I think there will be much more and more critical coverage of Nintendo mistakes than there is now.

I think the easiest way for us to show Nintendo how much of a crappy solution this is is to just not pay for their online service. Luckily, I don't care for Splatoon, so I don't see any reason to pay for the service anyway. But if Nintendo actually expected me to use this heap-of-crap solution for voice chat for a game I'd care about, I'd just not pay for online at all.

Well i guess they get by on it being free right now and only 20$ annually later. Sure its subpar but you get what you pay for i guess(at least on consoles)

@bigsocrates: Yeah, I know, that's what I mean by how it does it pretty badly. It says when I started playing it, but not for how long. I put a bunch of hours into Zelda, I would have had to, but the last I checked it said that I last played it ten days ago. Maybe if I check again it'll be different, but then again, I don't think it's an exact number of how many hours have been played, but around the number of hours. I checked my brother's account, and it said he played it for 55 hours or more. Also, about your topic more, while I again have little desire to do anything with its online portion, which means I probably won't pay twenty bucks a year for it, I do however think twenty dollars is a decent deal (well, of course as long as it all works).

It is ridiculous that you have to have an external source for voice chat though; I mean, what if I want to get an old flip phone or just use a landline? Ha ha. Jokes aside, it's still stupid. Lastly... about the number of games as you've mentioned twenty. Are there even twenty games worth playing on the system that is exclusive? That's also disappointing. For me, I'll only be playing the exclusives on Switch and hopefully third party, non-exclusive titles that have some sort of benefit or additions to that version that other versions don't. With the system alongside Zelda, I also got Cave Story +. I browsed the store but there wasn't anything I really wanted, though I'm not sure they show every game?

I'm not talking about it because my only voice chat experience was one multiplayer Modern Warfare game on X360 and I have never used it again after that. People that care about it should talk about it, write articles and so on. It just may be that they are in minority when it comes to Nintendo. It doesn't mean they shouldn't talk about it it may be the explanation why everyone else is silent.

I also completely agree with this and chalk it up to the double standard when it comes to anything Nintendo. You mentioning Tekken 7 is spot on because Nintendo release games that have half the content of comprapable games in the same genre but reviews rarely reflect that. There online service so far is garbage and regardless if I want to chat or not they should be held to account especially because they will be charging for it next year.

@fezrock: Xbox One did that 3 million in 6 weeks, not a month, the Switch's number is significantly more impressive. Additionally estimates for the Switch are 5 million as of a couple of weeks ago, ahead of where the Xbox One was (it took 5 months to reach that number). We'll have a better idea when Nintendo releases their April-June figures this month.

However, this comparison is important because he did use the Xbox as a counter example. I don't think there would be burning Xboxes at all. The Xbox One got guff, but for far more serious issues and they were exacerbated by it competing directly with the PS4. Also there's no use comparing multi platform games to a console. They are different, and even if a game is more people. Consoles get more attention because they are around longer, games are relatively small.

Who needs voice chat at all?

At this point, I really expect nothing from Nintendo when it comes to online. For me at least, it's more of just a fact of life I've learned to ignore because I've beaten the bush already over and over again between GCN, DS, Wii, 3DS and Wii U.

Honestly I use discord for every other platform I play on as well. Even if the voice chat was well-implemented on the console, I probably wouldn't use it. I don't think that's an excuse for Nintendo's weird solution, but for me personally the effects are pretty minimal. So I hear ya, but I just sort of shrug at this point. Unfortunately their games as exclusive to their platform, so it's not like I can just turn to a PS4 version of Splatoon for better online support or something. I'll buy there no matter what, because it's their title on their platform.

Nintendo makes great games. But literally everything to do with thier consoles since the Super Nintendo has been total batshit crazy. That's over 20 years at this point. Most people don't even remember a sane Nintendo or weren't even alive. But you have to put up with it, if you want to play thier games.

Imagining Nintendo as the Soup Nazi is pretty humourous.

If your solution to a problem in a game is to use something outside of the game, then you've fucked up. Even worse, Nintendo requires you to not only use something outside of the game, but also something outside of the console. I would feel differently if Nintendo was pioneering some amazing new communications technology, but they're not. Their competition has had this stuff working much better for a decade. I think it would have been better for Nintendo to just not have voice chat in the game than to put out this convoluted smartphone solution.

If it means I'll never have to hear random people in a lobby of a Nintendo game, I think it's a positive move.