online servers cost money.

Unless you want to queue up with a host that is a potential hacker, has unstable connection, or bans/kicks people for the lolz, it is best to have a third party (typically the dev) hosting online games.

Unless Nintendo wants to either:

1. continue to take losses on server maintenance

2. shut down some servers early, effectively killing the online portion of some games

3. have people pay for personal servers (EA let people do this before, most were uninterested)

4. have individual games hosted by individual consoles (subject to hacking, lag, harrassment)

Then they will be smart to charge for such service, which would explain why they would want to replace club Nintendo for membership/reward system.

Trust me, I would hate paying for online, but it is the most reasonable thing for Nintendo to do. And if you think about it, you can't expect server maintenance (or any other service) to always be free

I don't think that Nintendo will ever port games designed around buttons to a platform with absolutely no buttons. They've said as much. The games on mobile will be made from the ground up for mobile to take full advantage of the platform. That means no VC games.

They've also been pretty clear about their issues with a paid subscription. It's exclusive. It devides the player base to people who have it and people who don't. Especially with Nintendo's current audience, that would be very devisive, even if they were interested.

Like I said, they don't need a payed subcription for any of that, especially not for the better infrastructure. They've already come up with ways to monetize without resorting to a subscription plan, and it's very clear that that is the route they'll be going.

Wii U video chat exists and miiverse IM exists. They don't suck because of a lack of a payed subscription. They suck because of a weak OS and an incompitence on Nintendo's part. You don't need a subscription for that kind of stuff. You need a powerful OS and a team that understands how to put those features together into a UI that it simple and intuitive. Hopefully that team is DeNA and with the lofty goals of the NX, it'll have to have an uncharacteristically large amount of recources put into the OS for it to work and be modern and revolutionary the way they seem to be touting it. I think that some of those features, especially cummunication tools like the IM functionality, need to work on phones too via the membership program main app. That seems to be a no brainer.

Hasn't been an issue for PC.