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Nintendo Switch Online: New Info (Cloud Saves, 20 NES games, Family Plan)
- Thread starter Atheerios
- Start date
people also seem to confuse defending nintendo with people just saying they don't really care about this stuff as much as others do.
i don't really find any of this as 'crap'. the value for me is there because it's $20 to access some freebie games along with what else i have on the system. i don't play online much so voice chat through an app doesn't matter to me.
sure i can see some of this stuff as stupid like having cloud saves behind a pay wall but i also think we'll still hear more announcements later and people need to stop assuming stuff and just wait for the full announcement.
I've never posted here, I mostly lurk. I'm very shy, so I hope you forgive me if my post comes off as harsh.
As a Splatoon 2 player and fan, which is almost the only thing I play on this console nowadays, I'm pretty disappointed.
I think the $20 a year fee is okay I think. What isn't is the likelihood that Splatoon 2's matchmaking will suffer heavily for it in regions that aren't Japan, in some ranks, the matchmaking is pretty bad. It will also affect the plaza aspect of the game, some players would just go into the game to post the little pictures that you see in the big city area and in matches, many of them are not going to do that anymore due to the entry fee.
It's also disappointing that Nintendo has done nothing to placate the network issues the game has. Random disconnects are just a reality in Splatoon 2; I've had more issues with disconnects in this game than anything else I've played in the last year. I can't remember any other online shooter game where I got disconnected or someone in my team got disconnected at this frequency. The tick rate is one of the most terrible out of all popular shooting games out there, chances are, if you start shooting at someone and hit them first while they shoot back at you with the same weapon, you both die, because of the tick rate. The game also functions on P2P, which is probably the reason for the bad tick rate to begin with, there are no dedicated servers on the horizon.
It's also worth noting that the Octo Expansion which a lot of fans are hyped about is coming out one month before paid online.
I don't really have an interest in the NES games, or any of the other games Nintendo has labeled for online. Most of Nintendo's online experiences are anemic or for games I don't care very much for. MK8D is fun for a fun games, then you never play online again. ARMS and Mario Tennis I don't care about. Smash online has always been laughably bad, and any latency in a fighting game makes it hard to play seriously. We still don't have Animal Crossing or a Monster Hunter game localized out of Japan.
It's also incredibly odd that there's no way to backup your saves on your SD card or a USB drive.
This system would be collecting dust if not for Splatoon. I know the people over at r/nintendoswitch and Youtubers like Arlo will probably rave about how great and innovative cloud saves are, how ports of indie games already on PC is great. If they're stocked about all that, good for them, more power to them. I'm very underwhelmed this year so far with the releases on the system.
I love Splatoon 2 to death, but I'm very worried about its state after paid online comes on.
As a Splatoon 2 player and fan, which is almost the only thing I play on this console nowadays, I'm pretty disappointed.
I think the $20 a year fee is okay I think. What isn't is the likelihood that Splatoon 2's matchmaking will suffer heavily for it in regions that aren't Japan, in some ranks, the matchmaking is pretty bad. It will also affect the plaza aspect of the game, some players would just go into the game to post the little pictures that you see in the big city area and in matches, many of them are not going to do that anymore due to the entry fee.
It's also disappointing that Nintendo has done nothing to placate the network issues the game has. Random disconnects are just a reality in Splatoon 2; I've had more issues with disconnects in this game than anything else I've played in the last year. I can't remember any other online shooter game where I got disconnected or someone in my team got disconnected at this frequency. The tick rate is one of the most terrible out of all popular shooting games out there, chances are, if you start shooting at someone and hit them first while they shoot back at you with the same weapon, you both die, because of the tick rate. The game also functions on P2P, which is probably the reason for the bad tick rate to begin with, there are no dedicated servers on the horizon.
It's also worth noting that the Octo Expansion which a lot of fans are hyped about is coming out one month before paid online.
I don't really have an interest in the NES games, or any of the other games Nintendo has labeled for online. Most of Nintendo's online experiences are anemic or for games I don't care very much for. MK8D is fun for a fun games, then you never play online again. ARMS and Mario Tennis I don't care about. Smash online has always been laughably bad, and any latency in a fighting game makes it hard to play seriously. We still don't have Animal Crossing or a Monster Hunter game localized out of Japan.
It's also incredibly odd that there's no way to backup your saves on your SD card or a USB drive.
This system would be collecting dust if not for Splatoon. I know the people over at r/nintendoswitch and Youtubers like Arlo will probably rave about how great and innovative cloud saves are, how ports of indie games already on PC is great. If they're stocked about all that, good for them, more power to them. I'm very underwhelmed this year so far with the releases on the system.
I love Splatoon 2 to death, but I'm very worried about its state after paid online comes on.
it really is. He's fine with the way it is. You're not, and it's ok for both parties. If he finds value in it where you don't that's great for him and unfortunate for you. There isn't really anything to defend. Wither you're ok with it or you're not. It's not out yet, we don't know full details, and we knew that online was going to cost. If someone only wants to play online and it's 20 bucks a month and couldn't care less about "classic" games and voice chat/messaging, then they are happy. They even get their saves backed up. Why is that not ok for them? Some people browse here more than they actually play games, as a past time. They aren't all as "hardcore" as some of the masses her portray themselves as. Getting this worked up over an opposing opinion just isn't worth it, and when you go on the attack it's just bad form.
You should post more often. Your thoughts are very much worth reading and thank you for sharing them. :)
Not counting Mario or Mega Man:
- Metroid
- Zelda
- Zelda II
- River City Ransom
- Contra
- Punch out
- Castlevania I & III
- Final Fantasy
- Kirby's Adventure
- Blaster Master
- Dragon Quest III & IV
- Ninja Gaiden
- Rygar
- Journey to Silius
- Duck Tales
- Clash at Demonhead
- Crystalis
- Faxanadu
- The Guardian Legend
- Fire Emblem I & II
- Adventures of Lolo
- Battle of Olympus
- Little Sampson
- Super Dodgeball
- North and South
Can you calculate how man cups of coffee a month it is?
Because right now I'm buying a lot of cups of coffee for Netflix, prime, ps+, XBL etc etc etc.
You're just being a elitist with the browser talk. It's more than serviceable. It ain't no chrome or firefox or opera obviously. Nobody uses it like that.
And yes those features are free on these consoles, so Nintendo should aim to match similar features, for free.
Nobody is calling anything a measure of quality, the first person to compare the quality is you, and you stated your preference. Which is obviously here nor there as far as a features comparison goes.
What is "best points" is obviously very subjective.
I actually think this initial price offering is good and a great deal, however inviting the comparison seems more like scapegoating with a "well I prefer wah wah wah" rather than actual intent on saying "hey look, these people offer this already, and this is what Nintendo should at least aim for" regardless of which parts are free or not.
There's both free and paid material for online that Nintendo has to address, so inviting the comparison inevitably brings both around anyway. I just wanted to recommend not to do that, because it will devolve into "what I prefer" nonsense posts with people defending other consoles, or like you getting defensive a bit about Nintendo's offering.
Eh, i am just gonna enjoy what i enjoy on the switch anyways.
Though the real question for me remains: If i get the family package, can i share my games with someone else? (Like say, another ERA user)
Though the real question for me remains: If i get the family package, can i share my games with someone else? (Like say, another ERA user)
So that is what it has come to? Not even discounts are good enough unless it reaches a certain percentage. I like saving money. Whether it is 10 percent or 30 percent.
Can we stop using objectively? Because for others 20 bucks a year for a Netflix style sub service of getting classic games in waves, discounts, and cloud saves is a pretty cool with a good price.
If you want to bring up local USB backup saving, that is fair, but that is also a separate issue.
You consider a bunch of 30 year old games can compare to the content Netflix brings to the table, specially regarding it has a constant influx of newly made productions?
$20 at a "fancy" restauraurant". HAHAHA what's fancy to you, Denny's?
Good for you, but for those kind of discounts i just buy at day one and whatever, i can probably save more by preordering on amazon anyway.
Nintendo UK was updated to show the prices in GBP.
£17.99/year for a single account.
£31.45/year for a family account.
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Nintendo-Switch/Nintendo-Switch-Online/Pricing-1374627.html
£17.99/year for a single account.
£31.45/year for a family account.
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Nintendo-Switch/Nintendo-Switch-Online/Pricing-1374627.html
It's not a direct comparison. It looks like it'll be a Netflix or Game Pass styled feature, with Nintendo's old game catalogue.
I was expecting pretty much nothing from Nintendo Switch Online, for $24.99 CAD if I can get some older games with added online multiplayer that's great. It's not like everyone has to feel the same way about this either. As someone who only buys PSN Plus and XBL Gold for the free games per month and doesn't use it for online MP, paying $24.99 CAD to play enhanced NES games (with the prospect of SNES later) is a pretty good deal to me.
The value proposition is different for everyone. I'm not expecting a $24.99 CAD annual service to be comparable to a $69.99 service from Sony and Microsoft. I definitely don't expect that from Nintendo, either. I bought a Switch to play great first party games and play a lot of games on the go, it's fulfilled that purpose. This is an extra service, which for me, sounds good for the price. I can absolutely understand how it wouldn't be for others. Voice Chat being limited to an app is straight up dumb. Cloud saves being behind a pay wall is also bad, if there is no local solution implemented that doesn't require a subscription.
I just wish people could understand the reverse without saying that we're 'defenders' or 'we're letting them get away with it' nonsense.
This place is better than a GameSpot system wars style of discussion.
I think this is great value. They will surely add games to this as time goes on!
The sentiment is appreciated but I think you're overestimating how great the drop off is actually going to be like considering how successful the Switch is. $20 a year is hardly going to be deterring that many casual consumers.
They definitely will. I'm more keen to see what special offers subscribers get. Nintendo have been very quiet there.
Reckon Smash Bros. or another title will be the first to demonstrate this.
Thank you for the vote of confidence.
I thought I would reply to this post, I think it's insightful.
I have no doubts in my hunch that Nintendo is releasing this information early, because they don't want it to be the focus of their E3 showings. They pushed it back last year, likely because they thought that they could not afford to slow down Switch sales due to bad press.
I think I have a decent understanding of Nintendo's approach, and I don't blame them for it. Building all these online systems takes a lot of time. I'm fairly impressed by how well Splatoon 2 works, and that's not because, but in spite of being P2P and having an abysmally low tick rate.
But it extends beyond that. Here's a good example, again, from Splatoon;
In the game, you have three communication options, which are tied to the dpad, you have "Booyah", which doesn't mean much, people tend to use it as encouragement or because they're excited, it's the voice command where the squids go "woomy" or "ngyes". Then you've got "This Way", which is pretty much what it says on the can, and you've got "Ouch..." which can only be used after being splatted during the respawn timer and replaces one of the other commands. You only have two communication options tied to the dpad. Nintendo did not view it as relevant to give players two extra options such as "Use your specials!".
When you finish a game, you can interact with the other players' avatars in the city hub, but you cannot see their "Miiverse" posts, their drawings. Yet I can see them from random players I did not play with, and sometimes they advertise Discord usernames and communities, without mentioning some of the more risque posts you see once in a while. It's very weird. A few weeks ago there was a little scuffle in the plaza about furries, and one of the posts said "I miss the gays", there's literally no drawing, it's just drawn text that says that, which refers to some other scuffle there was in the game months prior, and this is one of the more "tame" things you'll find in the plaza.
However, if you play Splatoon 2 Japan (Which you need a Japanese cartridge to play, the game determines your region based on your cart/eshop download), these weird posts never happen. It's always a lot of beautiful art. It's almost as if Nintendo made the game just for Japanese players.
If you want to use voice chat in the game, you need to use this abomination of a headset, in case you forgot;
I've managed to bypass this by effectively using my computer as both the phone and that little connector, even with Splatoon 1 on the Wii U. I would just use Virtual Audio Cables to get the audio feed from the system, and mix it from the audio of whatever voice program I was using.
Splatoon 2 is incredibly successful in Japan. Not as much in North America or Europe. The player numbers don't even compare. If 1/4 of the players drop off, the matchmaking will be far worst off for it. So I'm hoping it's not too bad for the game's health. I have no doubt that all of us S-X rank players will pay for online anyway.
The "I expected nothing and I got something a bit better than nothing" tells it all, really. I don't think is a good proposition value, I have a SNES classic getting dust, so NES games are even less than an incentive, and the fact the catalogue is so short and we have no info of how many more games are gonna reach and on what timing, if we will have 3rd party games added or which other consoles will be part of the service (more consoles = bigger cost?) makes it unreliable to say at least.
Is cheap? yeah, but then I wish it would have been more expensive and actually offering something really useful and not hiding the only backup method behind a paywall.
A fancy restaurant is any restaurant where you sit and pay more than $1.99 for a shitty fast-food combo :)
Will the individual pass let me still play online split screen? Or am I forced to pay for a family pass to do that?
Nope I got a £125 headset for Xmas. The Steelseries 3 Bluetooth I think it's called? It uses Bluetooth to connect to my phone and a wire to connect to switch.
I guess the first part of your post is in reference to me 'defending' Nintendo. I'm not here to defend any company, I generally don't like going along with the mass over reactions from the gaming community about things. I'd rather wait until we have full details about what the service is before I critique it, but yeah my expectations for Nintendo are fairly low with online, because like I mentioned I don't really play online games much. So yeah, for me the value proposition of the $24.99 CAD subscription is pretty good with the enhanced NES titles.
I understand the viewpoint of those who are on the complete opposite end of it.
Yeah, this is what pushed me away from Nintendo in the first place. I was all-in on them through the end of the N64 generation and into GameCube; I bought so many GBA and GCN games. But they kept pushing GameCube-Game Boy Advance connectivity as a substitute for online play and that just didn't resonate with me. I ended up buying an OG XBox in 2003 purely for Live. It's frustrating because I want to engage in Smash Brothers online, but I know it won't have voice chat and therefore it won't be as fun for me to play with my friends as something that we can play on XBox or PS4 instead.
That's cool, but still kinda clunky.
It's pretty lame that the Switch can't support Bluetooth headsets straight up.
Yup. Maybe I did too much and I can create another. If profiles can use the same online account, then that's what I'll do. Make him restart his games over
Splatoon 2's Japanese performance only constitutes around ~40% of worldwide sales. I'm not saying it isn't a massive success in Japan but you're kinda downplaying the performance of the title in western regions. It still performs well in these regions.
The online service is cheap enough that the people who continue to play Splatoon regularly will pay for the service. I'm not expecting the matchmaking to take much of a notable hit when it's an evergreen title of a console that continues to sell at a good pace.
It can if you use a USB Bluetooth headset bur then there's still the issue of connecting your phone at the same time. I have an extension from my headset yo my switch and it reaches over 10 feet.
I have a hard connection to internet on 50+ MBPS line on the west coast and I get very little lag, and never drop. Others drop at times, but it's rare. I think Splatoon online is a YMMV situation. It was the same on WiiU. smash on the other hand was bad on WiiU. So i hope this $20 per Switch owner will amount to them just buying more and better servers. Smash needs to get better, and splatoon probably needs more servers in other areas so everyone gets top performance. Lack of save backups I think is Nintendos way of fighting save scumming. It will be interesting to see how the cloud save works.
I meant in terms of active players, not sales. Splatoon 2 is far more active in Japan. Over there, the game is a big deal. Here it's just another multiplayer game for the most part.
Not happening. Splatoon 2 runs on P2P, it doesn't have servers for games. I think the comm issues the game has is likely because it's P2P, not because of any server apparatus Nintendo is using.
L. O. L.
This thread is a goldmine...
It's $20 a year for online play, and free shit. $20. A. YEAR.
What changes would you consider meeting customers halfway? For two I can think of offering local save backups and voice chat through the console, but what else is needed? I really like the low cost of this, the potential for exclusive discounts, and the NES games with the promise of more coming regularly. Those are all pretty nice things for consumers.
I'll admit I haven't played a few of these and I would love to play Fire Emblem I and II, but I don't think games like Metroid, Castlevania and especially Castlevania II, Final Fantasy, Ninja Gaiden etc hold up. They've all been far and away outdone by games that are already easily available super easily on Nintendo's other platforms.
I did completely forget about Punch out but I'm gonna pretend I was still counting it because Mario is the ref. That game holds up.
$20/yr is worth it for the 20 classic game archive access alone, and for me that's where the value is.
I love the low cost but with any business experience you know that charging for something that was free is already a tough sell, if it had launched with the $20 price then yeah it would've been an easier transition even if with criticisms (like Sony had). But doing it this late into the systems life and not doing it right?
Lots of disconnects currently, that doesn't give confidence. Local back ups, voice chat, not screwing costumers with the VC to get them to sign up to their online service. These are the difference makers, would not be that much extra trouble and yet they don't do it.
The VC's creation was largely about combatting piracy with convenience, much like Steam built itself up as a way to fight piracy of PC gaming with convenience. Nowadays, Nintendo probably does not feel all that threatened by piracy of their old games; moreso threatened by piracy of their current games. And so they don't have to fight that fight anymore. The % of people downloading ROMs has no doubt shrunk massively compared to a decade ago. I can't back that up with a specific study, so I may have to go on a google hunt, so bear that in mind.
But it seems right if you consider that PC owners now compared to a decade ago are faced with an infinity of gaming choices. There are a billion games now, and backlogs stack miles high. In 2006, the concept of a backlog didn't exist, at least not in the same way. Steam had maybe 100 games on the service back then at most, and the era of the Steam Sale had not yet begun. Nowadays, PC gamers have backlogs spanning the hundreds, and where do retro games slot into that? Unless you're a super retro enthusiast, in which case you either dump your own ROMs or you have ROM backups from years ago that you move from drive to drive. Orrrrr you just own the physical hardware and cartridges in the first place.
So if piracy of retro gaming has diminished, it's no longer a factor in Nintendo's decisions. So they can scale back.
I also think that Nintendo, at this point, may see more value in the Classics line of hardware -- in which case they will probably continue to manufacture the NES and SNES Classic, albeit in waves, trying to capitalize on the "McRib is Back!" style of availability. Don't be surprised if this year's variant is an N64 Classic announced at E3, along with another manufacturing run of the previous two.
I don't think Nintendo's retro game selection will stop at NES with their online service, but I don't think it will get very expansive either, when the Classics exist. Given the Switch's portable nature, they may do Game Boy titles (retro Pokemon seems to sell really well) and bring back the Game Gear selection from the 3DS.
But it seems right if you consider that PC owners now compared to a decade ago are faced with an infinity of gaming choices. There are a billion games now, and backlogs stack miles high. In 2006, the concept of a backlog didn't exist, at least not in the same way. Steam had maybe 100 games on the service back then at most, and the era of the Steam Sale had not yet begun. Nowadays, PC gamers have backlogs spanning the hundreds, and where do retro games slot into that? Unless you're a super retro enthusiast, in which case you either dump your own ROMs or you have ROM backups from years ago that you move from drive to drive. Orrrrr you just own the physical hardware and cartridges in the first place.
So if piracy of retro gaming has diminished, it's no longer a factor in Nintendo's decisions. So they can scale back.
I also think that Nintendo, at this point, may see more value in the Classics line of hardware -- in which case they will probably continue to manufacture the NES and SNES Classic, albeit in waves, trying to capitalize on the "McRib is Back!" style of availability. Don't be surprised if this year's variant is an N64 Classic announced at E3, along with another manufacturing run of the previous two.
I don't think Nintendo's retro game selection will stop at NES with their online service, but I don't think it will get very expansive either, when the Classics exist. Given the Switch's portable nature, they may do Game Boy titles (retro Pokemon seems to sell really well) and bring back the Game Gear selection from the 3DS.
Noone has a gun to your head forcing you to subscribe to these services. I'm assuming you get benefits from all of them. So Nintendo should care that you pay for Prime and Netflix and for some reason give you a discount on their own service? What does that have to do with anything? If you don't think the benefits of these services are worth what you're paying for them, cancel them. Just seems that you're whining that stuff costs money without a real coherent argument.
At the end of the day, my combined subscription fees for all of these services aren't even a fraction of a percentage of my other monthly expenses. Every service I choose to pay for, I believe I get sufficient value from. And if you don't, then don't pay.