Game Pass on Switch would be a killer move. All Nintendo needs to do is be open to it and agree on a cut %.

- Nintendo and Xbox arent “direct” competitors like PS per se, so they compliment each other without taking away each other’s market.
- Xbox gets increased brand reach and Xbox portability.
- Nintendo gets steady revenue kickback

I rather just have physically released games on Switch. Otherwise not interested in rentals.

Not sure if Nintendo would want Gamepass on their system or not.

I do admit that Gamepass on Switch would make it the ultimate gaming system.  You could have all Nintendo 1st party games plus all major third party games too (not to mention Microsoft first party games).  I think this combo would be pretty devastating for Sony.  I also think it is all upside for Microsoft since Switch already has a large install base and it's continuing to grow rapidly.  But is it all upside for Nintendo?

In the short run it would help Nintendo.  They would sell more Switches, but they are already really successful without it.  It also has potential to bite them in the ass in the long run.  It might help Microsoft too much if they put Gamepass on Switch.  They would be helping Gamepass get popular and once that is done it probably couldn't be undone later.  And Gamepass can run on any mobile device.  Once it got popular Microsoft would have more leverage over Nintendo.

So it is probably safer for Nintendo not to allow Gamepass on Switch, from a business perspective.  But I'd have to admit, it would make for a pretty awesome gaming set up.

From its last report Switch moved 61 million hardwares and 406 million softwares in about 40 months

Half of these 406 million are the 37 Switch best selling games that sold over 1 million copies. This is a list filled with exclusives and first parties with a 60 USD price tag that go on sale once in a blue moon. So making a 45-50 USD average price for about 203 million softwares is pretty realistic

Other 203 millions are smaller titles, indies, B-tier 3rd parties, old third party ports, etc, etc, not only less expensive but go on sale quite often. I see a 15-20 USD on average for them

What I want to measure? The consumer expending on Switch ecosystem per user. Using this try hard estimation the average consumer spending on software sales on Switch in 40 months is anywhere from 200 USD to 240 USD. Of course this number is really inaccurate, as Switch sales are growing and new customers owns far less titles than people who got a Switch day 1 and software sales will grown like crazy in next 2 years, but it's the best I can do right now sorry

With 200-240 USD in mind we got 5-6 USD by month and that includes retailers shares from physical copies.
Game Pass is 10 USD by month with not retailers shares.

Remember GP will canibalize Switch software sales, Microsoft need to somehow prove to Nintendo they will get more $$ from GP subscriptions than from 6 bucks a month coming from sales which I doubt they will

Why? Well, for a system with majority of its sales coming from 3rd party (like Xbox) a GP cannibalization really makes sense as their biggest blockbusters profits were going to be split with studios and publishers nonetheless. But at least 40% of Switch sales are from 1st party software. Nintendo don't get 15% of software sales on its eshop, they get 100%. For Nintendo a subscription service competing with their own games will probably means revenue a losses 

Gamepass on Switch would be the ultimate combo, but Nintendo won't allow for it. They want people buying Nintendo games, and that isn't going to happen as much if Switch owners have hundreds of free games on Gamepass.

I don’t think that will be an issue. Nintendo 1st party games have a certain quality, whimsy and charm that can never be replicated by their competitors. A Switch owner can use Game Pass to play the next Elder Scrolls sure, but will still also buy the next Zelda and Smash games regardless. 

Big titles will gonna be alright, but smaller ones? Not sure. Many gamers don't have enough money or time to play/buy so many games, they will buy one or two big AAA a year and ignore smaller ones, prioritizing GP games 

I don't know enough about the financials to know how this would work... but I don't think it would necessarily be a good move for Nintendo.

It's similar to how Toys R' Us arranged with Amazon to do their online business. And by the time Toys R' Us" realized this was unsustainable, it was too late for them to build up their own online business, and they were kind of fucked.

I think Nintendo ultimately needs its own streaming/download service. I think the strength of their first party software lineup actually gives them a potentially huge advantage in that area. It would be better for them to build their own rather than letting Gamepass grow too large for them to ever compete.

I honestly have a hard time determining if this is supposed to be serious or not, but obviously Nintendo Online is not the same type of offering as Gamepass. Might be a foundation to build upon, but right now it's a tough sell even at 20 per year. 

I think it's pretty known that my allegiance lies with Nintendo, so if I wasn't being objective I would default for them.

Whether or not it's a tough sell depends purely on the price. So, that's kind of a weird argument. PS Plus has nearly 4x on an install base only about 2X the size, so I think it's fair to say NSO counts as a tough sell.

NSO was at 10 million last August. Gamepass hit that about April. So, they're relatively on par, but Gamepass is selling based purely on its game offerings, whereas NSO is also a paywall to online play. So, it's safe to say customers are seeing more value in Gamepass than in the ability to play NES and SNES games. Unless you want to argue that nobody is paying for NSO to play games online.

Gamepass definitely adds value to XBox's hardware. The fact that its available on other systems doesn't completely negate that. By that logic, NSO is worthless to Switch owners, because there are other legal systems that can play all of those games, and also they're very not hard to obtain through less morally upright means. 

For me, buying XBox hardware was the easiest and cheapest way to get access to Gamepass, so it drove me to XBox hardware. And even if I did wind up doing it on PC/Mac/Linux/w/e, that'd still be part of Microsoft's ecosystem. On the other hand, buying NSO was something I begrudgingly did to play online games. The SNES and NES games just made me slightly less salty about it. Maybe there were some people really dying to play Super Mario RPG that don't know about emulators/have firm moral values/can't find an SNES Classic/didn't buy it on the Wii, but I don't think NSO is doing all that much for Switch hardware.

Exclusive content is good, but the business model is somewhat archaic. Don't know if it will shift as drastically as TV and music towards some kind of subscription based model, but that's going to be a big part of market by 2030, and Nintendo needs to have some kind of solution in that space whether it's a direct competitor to Gamepass or their own take. NSO as it currently stands is nowhere near that. Or they can just decide to do things how they've been doing them... but that hasn't worked well for that many companies.