Nintendo has delayed their online subscription, that was set to launch in Autumn 2017, to launch sometime in 2018, meaning users will get some more time experiencing online on the Switch for free! They also revealed the prices and the fact that people with a paid subscription will get access to older games with new online play support. The full details and prices can be seen below.

Online lobby and voice chat
Our new dedicated smart device app will connect to Nintendo Switch and let you invite friends to play online, set play appointments, and chat with friends during online matches in compatible games─all from your smart device.

A free, limited version of this app will be available for download in summer 2017.

Classic Game Selection*
Subscribers will get to download a compilation of classic titles with added online play, such as Super Mario Bros. 3, Balloon Fight and Dr. Mario.

Subscription prices:

1-Month Membership
$3.99 (USD)

3-Month Membership
$7.99 (USD)

12-Month Membership
$19.99 (USD)

Source

More information regarding the classic games collection:

Nintendo confirmed that this monthly plan has indeed changed, telling Kotaku: “Nintendo Switch Online subscribers will have ongoing access to a library of classic games with added online play. Users can play as many of the games as they want, as often as they like, as long as they have an active subscription.”

Source

 

[KingVamp]

I can't believe people are sold on paying for online, at all.

 

[HaloEffect17]

you should not expect the price on goods to be the same number of monetary units across different currencies.

I never said I expected it. I'm complaining about our dollar because it has dropped significantly in recent years and has pushed the costs up by quite a bit. Take the Wii launch for example, $249 US at launch, $279 CAN over here. Had the Wii launched now, it would have probably been $339 CAN. Inflation... well, yes. But it's other factors, too (which I won't get into).

 

[CeeDee]

$20 is nice.
And free VC selection is cool too.

But... it's NES only. Why the fuck?
It explicitly mentions Balloon Fight and Dr. Mario of all games. How shitty is the selection going to be?

 

[Deleted User]

$20 is nice.
And free VC selection is cool too.

But... it's NES only. Why the fuck?
It explicitly mentions Balloon Fight and Dr. Mario of all games. How shitty is the selection going to be?

iirc those were fairly popular (I never owned an NES or an NES Classic). There was another quote that said "NES first, SNES Later", so chances are they are testing with NES and will move up.

Also, those saying why pay for online at all:

Once Switch's servers are up, and the $20/yr is being applied (hopefully to the servers) I would like you to try and use the 3ds's/Wii U's Nintendo Network again and tell us how you do. I can't confirm this will be better, but at least this way Nintendo makes sure people can't pirate online services.

Sounds like gibberish I know but I can't form a complete thought right now

 

[LuxerWap]

$20 is nice.
And free VC selection is cool too.

But... it's NES only. Why the fuck?
It explicitly mentions Balloon Fight and Dr. Mario of all games. How shitty is the selection going to be?

Probably because this is their first time adding online connectivity on classic games, so it's reasonable to start with NES only. They're playing it safe and try to see what they can do with SNES and possibly N64 selections. Cause adding online connectivity to these games requires a lot of work.

I guess Pokémon RBY foreshadowed wireless connection in the future. Lol.

 

[Xabring]

Well, Old games with new functionality are cool. And its WAY CHEAPER than xbux or sany. Hopefully they don't get full Microsoft here too and use your subscription to SURF THE FREAKING NET.

 

[CeeDee]

Probably because this is their first time adding online connectivity on classic games, so it's reasonable to start with NES only. They're playing it safe and try to see what they can do with SNES and possibly N64 selections. Cause adding online connectivity to these games requires a lot of work.

It really can't be that hard, though?
It'd be sending inputs from one system to another, and receiving ones from someone else, like most online games, while emulating easy to emulate games.
I don't see why that isn't also reasonably doable with SNES or perhaps N64.

I guess Pokémon RBY foreshadowed wireless connection in the future. Lol.

Pokemon wasn't the first to receive wireless. There were NES (and I believe GB?) games with Download Play, eg SMB3.

 

[queendude]

20 dollars are acceptable

For the first time Nintendo didn't disappoint me.

 

[eduall]

it's cheap for a year! o.o

 

[death360]

Yeah way cheaper than xbl gold.

 

[Deleted User]

$20 a year is a very good price. Enjoy playing Mario Kart online for free while you can.

 

[DKB]

wow nice i want to play smb3 for the 1500th time

but 20 dollars is a good deal dont know why some people are complaining about it. not here but in other places

 

[TheRenegadist]

I get other companies offer a paid online service but Nintendo has always been that best friend who has always offered you free online services which I never had a problem with despite what other people are saying. It's cool that they extended it but that will just come as a shock for more people later on when they take it away and put a price tag on it. Too bad we don't live in a perfect world where either money grows on trees for things such as this or Nintendo had the money to host their services for free.

 

[Bladexdsl]

$20 a year is a very good price. Enjoy playing Mario Kart online for free while you can.

don't forget it will be around $30 for us

 

[Justin20020]

Still cheaper than psn

 

[ov3rkill]

*sigh*
Why can't we ever play online games without paying anymore? Isn't buying a game enough?
That was the beauty of Sony and Nintendo. No need to pay in order to play online compared the Xbox which required Gold membership. And now, Nintendo is joining the bandwagon of subscription-based online services. *sigh*

 

[Pleng]

It really can't be that hard, though?
It'd be sending inputs from one system to another, and receiving ones from someone else, like most online games,

I'm currently in the process of finalizing an online game and I can assure you that it's not that simple, and it's not how most online games work at all. If it was really that then every online experience would be perfect with no ghosting or bizzare occurrences. Latency is a massive issue when trying to maintain game state across two or more machines.

Crude example: If player A presses fire then a bullet is created instantly on his machine, but it could take up to half a second before the recipient machine receives that command. At which point, on player A's screen he's hit player B with his bullet, but player B has in the meantime walked in the opposite direction so he is not in fact in contact with the bullet and therefore doesn't died, but player A has yet to receive notification that player B is travelling in the opposite direction. How do you deal with that scenario? You need to come up with a system of guestimation and confirmation.

And they need to do all that without the source code to the original games (presumably...). Now that's clearly possible as there are emulators that already do it. I'm not sure how, and I've never tried it so I don't know how well it works, but my best guess is that, as the RAM footprint of the consoles being emulated is particularly small, they do some clever synchronising of RAM snapshots at regular intervals. The NES internal RAM, according to Google is 2KB, the SNES has 128KB RAM. So clearly, if this is what they're doing, the NES games would be much easier to synchronise than SNES games.

 

[_______]

So no game save backup until 2018 then? That's cross our fingers that this first gen product still last when it's launched.

 

[jimmyleen]

I'm still waiting for a reason to try it in the first place.

Nintendo hopes more people will use there online service mostly because they are running old console emulators on servers the same way Sony runs the PS3 emulator on servers, AKA streaming gamecube, N64, DS etc etc games to the Switch. As far as I can tell the voice chat feature is just icing on the cake.

EDIT: Once the Switch gets hacked people will have no real need for most of the things Nintendo will be offering with there online service, except for maybe voice chat.

 

[TheRenegadist]

Nintendo hopes more people will use there online service mostly because they are running old console emulators on servers the same way Sony runs the PS3 emulator on servers, AKA streaming gamecube, N64, DS etc etc games to the Switch. As far as I can tell the voice chat feature is just icing on the cake.

EDIT: Once the Switch gets hacked people will have no real need for most of the things Nintendo will be offering with there online service, except for maybe voice chat.

That's going to take awhile to get going, I honestly hope that the homebrew community can crack the Switch wide open to allow for any of the past consoles (Minus the Wii) so that we can load up all of our favorite games for on the go play from the NES to the Gamecube. Something like that would be my one big push to snag myself a Switch. Having every Nintendo system on the go is something I have not yet accomplished and would give me a reason to pick up a Switch.

Edit: I forget the Joycons exist for the Switch, Wii gaming on the Switch might be feasible.