What the literal heck Nintendo?!?

[DonFerrari]

padib said:

There is something that needs to be cleared up. I saw some comparisons with Gamepass here but it's not correct.

Nintendo Online is 20USD per year, meaning less than 2USD per month. In contrast, Xbox live gold is currently at 10USD per month, meaning 120USD per year. So given the 100USD difference, the level of quality is understandable. What Nintendo needs to do is increase the price of Online while also improving the quality. Otherwise it is useless and will always feel like 20USD poorly spent.

Nintendo Online + Expansion is 50USD per year, meaning a little over 4USD per month. Gamepass is a whole different beast, it seems to be priced at 15USD per month and includes gamepass. Now that will always remain an unbeatable offer no matter what Nintendo does. For 180USD per year, you get almost all the AAA games you need on the console and indies. There is very little Nintendo can do to stop this other than to make its own gamepass but I'm not for it since it will only consolidate the market even more, and could come across as another Disney+ type of capitalistic hedged garden.

What they probably should do to remain strong is to outsource the online service and throttle on usage, then charge online on a per-game basis, since many online Nintendo games like Animal Crossing and Pokemon don't need twitch timing. Only certain specific action or fighting games need it such as Smash, Mario Tennis, Mario Kart or Mario Golf. There should be a 3rd plan for dedicated games that allow this type of customization on a per-game basis, with checkboxes adding up the subscription. Everything else can fall under your typical online speeds.

Well you can ignore GP and just go versus Gold and PS+, 2 or 3 current games (sometimes AAA that is less than 1 year old) for about similar price of what Nintendo wants to charge this expansion to give several gens old games.

And if we are talking only the multiplayer aspect of the online, Nintendo version is very much worse than all the rest (even more for adding friends and the like), worse even than what PSN was when free.