Nintendo Switch

[Arjahn]

Welp, just heard about the paid subscription service to play online, guess I'm not getting a Switch.

Money's already pretty tight and I have no plans on paying for a service that Nintendo's previously handled like crap and a console without even a tie-in. A few lackluster exclusives isn't going to change my mind either, pretty disappointed honestly.

To be fair, we don't even know everything that the subscription will entail, or how much it will cost. Also, I feel like this complaint is part of the double standard people have for gaming these days. People asked Nintendo to modernize their consoles, and now that they have, some of the stuff we don't like has come with it. That's be to be expected, there is no perfect console experience if you aren't willing to drive over a few bumps. This kind of attitude says to me that you are counting your chickens before they hatch. See what else the systems does before you decide not to get it I say.

I don't like defending Nintendo with very little information nor giving them the benefit of the doubt. I'm basing my disappointment on the facts that:

• Previously, Nintendo's online has been awful
  
• Previously, paid subscription services just to use the internet on consoles have been awful
  
• We have no real information on how Nintendo plans on improving their online services beyond a few buzzwords such as "modernizing" and "friends list", nor why those improvements merit taxing the playerbase
  

A few years ago, only Xbox was charging to use the internet on their console, and now it's becoming the standard and everyone's cool paying for their internet twice and I just don't get how everyone's so complacent. Maybe if you are one of these people who dedicates thousands of dollars a year to gaming and paying a tax for playing those games isn't as significant, but for those of us who are living paycheck to paycheck, I don't want the cost of playing a game to increase from $60 to $120 just for a year (assuming they're ONLY charging the standard $5/mo).

Not to mention the absolutely scummy way Nintendo plans on implementing it with the bait and switch. Sure, they sell it as if they're doing you a tremendous favor by offering their "brand new internet services" for a few months and then hitting you with the collection basket, but think of all those kids who get really excited to play Splatoon 2 and then suddenly in Fall, they can't connect so they whine to their parents and of course their parents are gonna cave and pay for it so their kids don't get upset and so they don't feel like they wasted upwards of $400 on this hunk of junk. Not to mention the push for people to get it early or you'll miss out on free internet! when the console has very few games to actually play is weird and is going to leave a lot of gullible people with untouched Switches sitting in their entertainment centers gathering dust a month after launch.

That's also not even considering how god-awful Nintendo's online services have been up to now, and unless they can actually demonstrate servers that don't crap their pants every twenty seconds, having the audacity to start charging for a barely functioning service is unbelievable.

Another note is that they'll probably start charging you to access servers on their consoles that they don't even run or pay to maintain and/or force developers to integrate their own Nintendo Online service into their games. If I buy a new Monster Hunter game on the Switch, odds are I'll either A. Have to pay Nintendo Online even though Capcom runs the servers, or B. Nintendo will force Capcom to use Nintendo's servers and I'll have to pay more for an inferior service than what I was previously getting for free.

In terms of "modernizing", who fucking cares how modern the service is? What, we had a slightly less than optimal Friends system and no public voice chat before, now let's pay them $60 a year forever to implement those systems one time? Why not just make the console slightly more expensive if you're going that route? They're just doing it this way because they know that they can get away with charging users more for essentially nothing because the other systems have tried and succeeded at it. This isn't Nintendo improving or modernizing their systems, this is them sinking to the levels of their competition.

I also don't appreciate how passive aggressive you're being about how sure you are in the untested service. I used to justify using Nintendo systems due to their exclusives, but with a lackluster list of exclusives on the switch other than a Zelda game who's hype I'm not buying into based on previous experience, learning that they're going to start charging us for essentially nothing and implementing it in a somewhat scummy way is a huge deterrent towards buying one.