So just because Microsoft is a giant corporation with the ability to bleed money and offer free services to you, Sony and especially Nintendo should do the same? 

Just to be clear, I am not defending Nintendo here, there should be a grace period of 1-6 months, but they don't have to give you anything for free. They are a company in it to make money, and they have no other business venue, other than video games. Basic concepts.

Nintendo Switch Online is, without a doubt, the worst thing Nintendo has shat out since the Star Fox Zero. Granted, SFZ is way worse, but this is low hanging bollocks.

Edit: Christ reading this thread really reminds how sad Nintendo thralls can be.

I hear this a lot.

Sony does have their own Cloud Service don't they? It's wrapped up in the company they purchased for PS Now. It is just not commercially sold/accessed outside of Playstation uses.

Look at my replies to spokenTruth, he had a similar point.

keeping cloud saves behind a paywall is a bad service regardless of whether sony does it or nintendo. Why did you mention sony? Did you try to brand me as a sony fanboy?

Also, why are you still pretending that cloud save cost billions of dollars and only a huge company like Microsoft can do it for free? I've given you examples for companies that are as big or smaller than Nintendo and still offer cloud saves for free.

Your point against Valve was also weird, "Valve is damn near nothing but a service company anyway. And they get paid via advertising." What? Valves main business is the same as Nintendo's, selling games on their platform, they're even getting the same 30% share from 3rd party games.

Ultimately the reason why Nintendo keeps cloud saves behind a paywall doesn't even matter, it's a worse service compared to many of their competitors.

You don't seem to get what they're saying Sony and Nintendo would require to invest billions in order to offer cloud saving for free that's a massive investment for something that brings in no money. MS had the infrastructure up because they had servers from other aspects of their business already stretching back to all the way when they first had their own online mail service they've been making money off them from their other business exploits hence why they can dedicate a server or two to them with out charge, Valve are a service platform other companies pay a % on sales to be able to distribute their games on PC and manage maintenance the publishers selling their games on the platform are footing the bill. Publishers like Activision have advertisements and aggressive monetisation of their annual games paying things on their side.

Both Valve and MS had a business model that already involved using servers before hand while both Sony and Nintendo didn't which is why the latter two have to utilise partners to have servers so have to charge in order to pay for it.

I still have several PS1 memory cards in a drawer in my game room. Losing my stuff or breaking it hasn't really been a problem. Cloud saves are nice but they've never really been a must. Before that, I just carried all of my saves around on a USB drive.

With the Switch, you don't have any options. Your system is the end all be all. You can't copy anything in any way shape or form. Nintendo doesn't have to offer free cloud saves. It's okay. Let me save my data to individual games like on the Gameboy. I lose the game, I lose my data. Let me copy my saves to a micro SD card. Great. Give me passwords like it's 1987. I'll deal with it. I just hate having all of my eggs in one basket.

You're not reading what's being posted Sony and Nintendo are partnered with companies in order to use their servers even for eShop and PSN.

Having an online service doesn't mean you have your own server infrastructure a lot of games pre-gen 7 were peer to peer especially on console games that did have online, Valve back in 2003 were acquiring servers as they already had the blue print for their business model they already had a few when HL2 launched as the game required Steam verification. Both Sony and Nintendo didn't have anything proper online service until the PS3 and Wii launched, being a big player doesn't mean you're going to randomly invest billions into your own servers for something that hasn't taken off gaming companies outside of a few select genres weren't sure on how to go about with the concept of online it was mainly a PC feature for the good part of 30 years and guess who are PC centric companies? MS and Valve, Valve is even founded by former MS employees.

And it seems you don't know what the initial reason for this discussion was.

First of all, Sony and Nintendo partner with other companies rather than building their own server structure does not necessarily mean that free cloud savings would let them go bankrupt. Even if the financial burden would be too high, it would still be their own fault that they can not offer this service for free. They decided to rely on third party internet infrastructure.

That's why I said "Nintendo is charging money for cloud saves because they can."
They just want to make a little of bit extra money from people who aren't interested in their mediocre online subscription.

You're acting as if any business in existence owes you something when in fact neither Sony nor Nintendo do which is why if the financial burden is an issue they add subscriptions the same way countries adjust taxes to sort out issues or add to their infrastructure it's unrealistic to expect companies to invest in something unrelated to their business years before it becomes a factor in their field, you're essentially arguing in hindsight it would be like saying the US should have anti aircraft guns locked and loaded to stop the Pearl Harbour incident.

They're charging money because it's part of the service package that's what it comes down to.