| VAMatt said: The real question is, how much will this hold back the Switch? Frankly, this is so ridiculous that I think Nintendo would be better off to just say "To protect the community from toxic douchebags, the Nintendo Switch will not offer online chat capabilities". |
Not by much. Nintendo games have never sold based on online functionality and I'm sure people will manage via discord, using nothing, or using the app. These aren't the kinds of things that ruin a console. It's having no games, too high of a price, no exclusives, etc. Sure, there are some people who will get pissed off by the incompetence but most will just find a way that suits them or don't use it at all.
I highly doubt games like Pokemon Switch, Mario Odysssey, etc. will sell based off of online functionality and those games are the ones that will really sell the switch to consumers. Nintendo really just doesn't fully understand online because they've focused on local multiplayer and mostly single player experiences for a while and it has done very well for them and continues to do so. An elegant solution for voice chat is desired, it is a plus, but in the long run won't effect overall sales for Switch hardware and software.
I think Nintendo wanted to put this option out just to say they have a family friendly, and safer...maybe...way to do online voice chat and online functions. From what I'm seeing the online functionalities work fine as a service but the voice chat thing just sucks ass. So in short, yes it sucks that the app is sort of incompetent but I doubt it'll effect the sales of the system.
