Nintendo's first foray into the world of paid subscription service online has been an interesting ordeal, to say the least. With just only half a year having gone by since the launch of the Nintendo Switch Online service, we've gotten our first look at some official numbers as released in Nintendo's fiscal year report. Over 9.8 million users worldwide have signed up for and bought a membership for Nintendo Switch Online. This figure excludes those who only used free trials, but it does include family membership users as individuals. Not only that, but out of those 9.8 million or so, a massive portion of those players, 2.8 million, have downloaded and played Tetris 99.

Are you part of that number of people paying for online, cloud saves, and NES titles?

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[FAST6191]

I am not sure how I rank as hysterical in this. Other than phone bills during the dreamcast I have never paid for online games, aim never to do so either unless there is some massive incentive to do so (matrix or bust). Historically such things have been free and the requirements have not changed (3d positional data for a limited number of objects is about the same as it ever has been) while bandwidth, storage and such costs have dropped through the floor compared to when internet games started to get popular and entered their heyday, sales are also about the same as those times as well. Worse is they have dozens of alternative sources of income, ones tied directly to the services in question, if "budget for it in the game dev just like you would to buy in music or something" or "give the users the chance to run their own servers" is somehow not an option.

As for greedy somehow being an insult to nintendo's good name or whatever then I searched my mind, contemplated what I know of the world and ways in which things work. My assessment of the idea of charging for online, much less one at the dubious quality Nintendo offers, when there is a mountain of historical evidence to say it is not necessary is a greedy money grab and I feel sorry for the people that fell for it. While Nintendo were free to try they failed to justify it to me, and went further than that and did it in such a way that I find it distasteful.

On peer to peer the issue is not the bandwidth used by the player (I know the one quoted is in the internet backwater that is the US but even there most people don't have limits a game would touch) but the inconsistency of connections; you are relying on home internet for everybody involved to be good, and wifi signals to hold, as opposed to some nice redundancy/backup laden server in a colo facility with a fat pipe with a service level agreement. If they want to have p2p as some kind of backup (it will have all the same "benefits") then even better.

 

[|<roni&g]

Except these people who implied it:






Nintendo are not required to justify their decision to charge for a service.


Yes, charging a small amount of money for access to a service with clearly defined perks and no hidden costs is a total con isn't it. How shameful.


As I said above, yes, asking your customers to pay to use your services is such a scummy business practice isn't it. Businesses would all be much better off if they just let their customers use their services for free, right?


Who's forcing you? You have the choice not to use the service. "I'm fine with Pizza Hut making money, but if their means of making money lies in the locking off of bigger pizzas and forcing customers to pay for them, then we got a problem."


Well at least we agree on something.

Lol who are you? You’re one of the customers wanting to spend money on something that was and still should be free. If you don’t work for Nintendo you have no business arguing in their favour when you’re just a customer.
Btw you have a little crap on your nose