Nintendo has a huge back catalog of older games that are no longer possible to find physically, that also aren't available on Digital. They are missing out on alot of money because of this. Take the older Pokemon games for instance, all of the physical copies of these that were produced were sold, so we just have used copies getting passed back and forth at increasingly higher prices, and Nintendo gets no money out of that since they are used copies.

I find myself wanting to play Heartgold or Soulsilver currently since I didn't own a DS originally and therefore have never played them before, but it is impossible to find an actual legit used copy for less than $80, double what they cost when they were new, so pretty much my only choices for playing it are an illegal ROM download on my PC or an illegal Chinese reproduction copy for about $25 on eBay. Nintendo could release these older Pokemon games, and many other older games that are no longer available physically, on the Switch eShop and make good money selling them for $10-20. But they don't, the last old Pokemon that got a digital release were the Red/Blue/Yellow digital ports for the 3DS eShop 4 years ago. They sold pretty well for old games, 1.5m in the first month, yet Nintendo never released the other older Pokemon games on the eshop, like Gold/Silver/Crystal, Sapphire/Ruby/Emerald, FireRed/LeafGreen, Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, HeartGold/SoulSilver, Black/White, and Black 2/White 2, so those games are all lost in the ether now, highly sought after collectibles that can no longer be purchased for a reasonable price through official channels. 

Switch specs should easily be able to emulate systems like NES/SNES/N64/GBA/DS, maybe even Gamecube, so it probably wouldn't be too hard to get these older games running on Switch so that they could make some digital bank off of them. 

You are slightly wrong. Gold, Silver and Crystal did get an eshop release on the 3DS a few years after Red, Blue and Yellow. Also, whilst they aren’t that common, I occasionally come across copies of the 5th Gen in my local second hand retailer which are all under £30. I don’t think those are old enough to have seen a major price rise.

But on your main point, Nintendo putting more older Pokemon games on the eshop won’t be a bad idea.

Not Heartgold or SoulSilver.  Those were the DS remakes.  

Edit:Nvm poor comprehension on my part.

I thought I remembered Gold/Silver/Crystal getting a 3DS eShop release as well, but when I checked the wikipedia page I saw nothing about them, so I thought my memory was just playing tricks on me. 

It's kinda ridiculous. You have some of the most beloved games in history but you won't make them available for the current generation. I mean, I get it there's emulation but what about people who just want to have a genuine experience or an experience as close to genuine as possible without having to hunt down old hardware and software?

Though, with that being said their current Switch Online offerings in terms of 1st party isn't bad. If they continue with Gameboy, 64, GBA, and Gamecube then that'd be even better but I'd imagine that they'd want a bit more per month/year for anything over Gameboy.

It doesn’t seem to mention it with the other release dates but it does reference in the last paragraph of the header text. In any case

https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/pokemon-gold-version-3ds/

i agree. there are tons of older games i would love to play (again) on switch.

off the top of my head: metroid prime trilogy, galaxy 1&2, super mario sunshine, f-zero gx, metroid other m, wind waker, twilight princess, skyward sword, dkc returns, the last story, resident evil lightgun games, star wars the clone wars, viewtiful joe 1&2, etc etc

I still have never played Mario Sunshine. I would love to as I've never owned it on GC. I would also love to revisit the Galaxy series again. I do have them on my Wii though. I'm looking forward to Nintendo releasing some more titles again. They really should.

Yes that is a lot of money on the table. I don't care much for BC while I like remasters and mainly remakes. But if you can make good money out of small effort you should

I think Youtuber Arlo made a good point on why Nintendo is taking so long releasing retro games and why they're releasing them in a subscription service instead of charging for individual games. Nintendo wants to use the NSO subscription as a long-term revenue stream and likely is taking so long releasing games to hype up the service for each release and keep subscribers hooked by anticipating new releases and drip feeding them games they've never experienced.

If Nintendo were to offer their entire back-catalog of games from the start, it's possible that within a year the subscriber could have experienced all the games he wanted and might not be inclined to subscribe to NSO for multiple years since he doesn't feel the incentive of spending a yearly amount to experience games he's already experienced within his first year of the service. What gives some evidence to this is Nintendo revealing SNES games as part of the NSO subscription a year after NSO started when Nintendo knew many users' NSO subscription were going to expire on the 1 Year Anniversary of NSO, so to keep subscribers hooked they revealed SNES games.

Unfortunately, it's likely going to take years for the Switch to get Nintendo's entire back catalog of games, Nintendo's going to is trying to keep subscribers hooked by revealing a new console's catalog of games that subscribers haven't experienced yet, and Nintendo is gonna do this yearly.