What the literal heck Nintendo?!?

[IcaroRibeiro]

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.

Game Pass is expensive not because of the quality of infrastructure, but because of licensing fees. Game Pass is also supposed to mainly replace gaming purchases, at least from first party, overall gaming spending will be always smaller on Game Pass unless you play less than 3 games a year, the online being far superior to Switch Online is just the cherry on top 

Your solution for asking will only need to another increasing in overall spending. I can already see Nintendo asking 10 USD for each game you want to play online

Granted, there is no reason to ask money for online when online is the reason why the software is being sold in first place. Let's remove online gameplay for Mario Kart, Smash and Animal Crossing and see how much less they would be selling, specially with gen Z kids and teenagers that are used to play everything online