With the release of the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo already announced that their online service will be a subscription service. Because of the high popularity of the console, Nintendo quickly postponed the official release to a a later date and said they'd further improve the service. Fast-forward today and we finally have the date when it gets released: September 2018. However, did Nintendo keep their promise of making their service better?

Cool multiplayer games

One thing why you'd pay for the service is obviously for the multiplayer part. And for that, we have some amazing games to choose from. Splatoon 2, ARMS, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Pokkén and more exist for the Switch which have a high amount of players duking it out online. Some, like Splatoon, even heavily rely on their multiplayer aspect. So if you want to play that, it's heavily recommended to have a subscription later on. With the portability of the Switch, you're also able to play these games at any place you're going.

Not only that but you're also gaining access to classic games from the NES and further eras - with a twist! Some would allow you to use online features. The games shown on the website are Super Mario Bros. 3, Balloon Fight and Dr. Mario. No further details on that but my guess would be that this would mean leaderboards and maybe even online netplay like we're used to emulators on PC.

Finally, games we can play online since emulator days... but on the Switch!

But... where's the improvement?

One of the big reasons why Nintendo postponed the service was to further improve the service. The question we all now wonder is, where are they? There is still no option to send messages, to universally invite people to a party, to easily add new friends without relying on friend codes, no cloud saves and more. Voice chat only rudimentary exists over the Nintendo Switch app... which for now is still just a glorified Splatoon 2 Splatnet app. That means any other game still doesn't have voice chat available.

Worse, you'd expect that Nintendo would invest the money for dedicated servers but we're not even getting that. I love to play Splatoon 2 and ARMS and both are plagued with sudden disconnects, lag spikes, etc. no matter how good your connection is. Because all games work on pure peer to peer connection, it's possible that one person can drag down the whole game and even make everybody disconnect. This was the case on Wii U too so Nintendo found a solution on the Switch by just limiting your search area regionally. This works alright but depending on where you live, you could have long waiting periods - that's what for example European ARMS players complain about.

Tasting the lucrative subscription model

Current price model for Nintendo's online service

Why would Nintendo do that then? Simply put, the postponing of the service wasn't really done to add in enhancements and make the service better. With the explosive success of the console, they couldn't just suddenly stop the hype and force people to pay for the subscription in the middle of the train. Postponing was the best option as that would make people have less cons to buy it and get hooked at multiplayer games like Splatoon.

Ingenious, as Nintendo games are exclusive on the Switch so why not put a price tag on the online service? Sony already managed to find success with Playstation Plus on the PS4 and Microsoft already had that since the beginning. However while Sony and Microsoft have something to show like many of the online features and free games that isn't Super Mario Bros yet again, Nintendo couldn't show that they have made any improvements on their already existing online service. There's nothing in value we can see that makes the switch to a subscription have any point.

This makes the whole ordeal even more annoying. You're forced to pay for online play now too and you're not getting any advantages - actually even less features than what the Wii from 2006 managed to do. But some of the games Nintendo released are just too good to not be able to play online. Mario Kart 8, ARMS, etc. are a real blast playing online. So now you're standing in between two decisions: Do you want to boycott this and not pay anything or are you just too hooked that you're going to pay regardless just to play online. Well, I guess... it's only 20€ per year, right?

---

Thank you for reading my opinion piece. Are you interested in gaming, gadgets and other technological things? Follow me on Steemit @thetimewalker to read more posts!