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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - What the literal heck Nintendo?!?

DonFerrari on 18 October 2021
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.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

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IcaroRibeiro on 18 October 2021
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 



DonFerrari on 19 October 2021
padib said:
DonFerrari said:

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.

Don, it's even simpler than that. Gold and Nintendo Online offer virtually the same thing (albeit of very varying quality, very good on MS side, poor on Nintendo side), still the price is 20USD on Nintendo's side and 60USD on Microsoft's side. But they essentially offer the same service while of varying quality.

My point was that at 20USD it is not so greedy, the problem is really the quality of the online service. Because with the extra perks, it would be essentially the same price as Gold but you get more, so long as the quality of the service is up to today's standards.

So the truth is that the price is right, the problem is that the quality of the service is poor.

Nope I don't think you really get more on the Nintendo Online or expansion compared to neither Plus or Gold.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

DonFerrari on 19 October 2021
padib said:
DonFerrari said:

Nope I don't think you really get more on the Nintendo Online or expansion compared to neither Plus or Gold.

Don, Nintendo Online is just the ability to play online. It's 20USD per month.

Nintendo Online Expansion is perks that don't add much value. My point is that 20USD to play online is not greedy. The point is that the quality of the service is the problem. Speed, communication, responsiveness, everything you would expect from online in 2021

Actually charging for the online play is greedy, from all 3, sure Nintendo is the one less greedy in this field but well when the quality offered is so inferior it would be hard to justify the price.

PC still have online for free. And we do know that the cost for the online of the 3 isn't that expressive (even more when they already profit from the game sold) even more when they don't host most of the titles/play, they basically only manage matchmaking.

PS3 had free online, Wii and/or WiiU had free online, (did og Xbox had free online?). They started charging purely based on greed and we know it. And the reason for that was basically X360 was able to charge without backlash, so when Sony put PS+ only for the games and had 2M subs but when changing to block MP (except for f2p and others that had their own sub) they rose to like 40M subs and almost everyone accepted (which makes clear that the free games are only there to have less complains, and MS had to add them to avoid negative comparisons). Then Nintendo followed suit but charging less and well giving titles that aren't worth much. Charged online is pure greed.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

d21lewis on 19 October 2021

Even at $20 a year, Nintendo's online experience is not even on par with PS2 and Xbox from 20 years ago. The only saving grace was the cloud saves.



Twitter: @d21lewis

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Conina on 19 October 2021
dx11332sega said:

PS + games stomp Xbox gold , This month PS+ gifted PS4 users a Modern game , Mortal Kombat XL , In Gold we get Resident Evil Code veronica from Xbox 360 though Resident evil is great and all. PS+ is too good but Microsoft real focus is adding in gamepass.

Mortal Kombat XL is over five years old and PS+ subscribers already got it in the PS+ collection the whole year.

So not that impressive.



Runa216 on 19 October 2021

I love this thread! Went from 'yeah, I agree the pricing on this is absurd' to 'haha gamer entitlement strikes again'.



My Console Library:

PS5, Switch, XSX

PS4, PS3, PS2, PS1, WiiU, Wii, GCN, N64 SNES, XBO, 360

3DS, DS, GBA, Vita, PSP, Android

Mr.GameCrazy on 19 October 2021
d21lewis said:

Even at $20 a year, Nintendo's online experience is not even on par with PS2 and Xbox from 20 years ago. The only saving grace was the cloud saves.

Even then, several games didn't support cloud saves for some reason like Splatoon 2 and Pokemon Let's Go, which is ridiculous.



DonFerrari on 19 October 2021
padib said:
DonFerrari said:

Actually charging for the online play is greedy, from all 3, sure Nintendo is the one less greedy in this field but well when the quality offered is so inferior it would be hard to justify the price.

PC still have online for free. And we do know that the cost for the online of the 3 isn't that expressive (even more when they already profit from the game sold) even more when they don't host most of the titles/play, they basically only manage matchmaking.

PS3 had free online, Wii and/or WiiU had free online, (did og Xbox had free online?). They started charging purely based on greed and we know it. And the reason for that was basically X360 was able to charge without backlash, so when Sony put PS+ only for the games and had 2M subs but when changing to block MP (except for f2p and others that had their own sub) they rose to like 40M subs and almost everyone accepted (which makes clear that the free games are only there to have less complains, and MS had to add them to avoid negative comparisons). Then Nintendo followed suit but charging less and well giving titles that aren't worth much. Charged online is pure greed.

You're saying that because you probably don't understand the costs of maintaining servers for online play.

For one game a few servers are okay, but Nintendo as a platform holder, like Sony and Microsoft, pay for servers to compute the logic of online play for all the games they support. So no it's not greedy of them they are just covering costs.

It is greedy though if they do a lousy job and we pay for it.

That's my point.

They get that money on spades from the sale of the games and the royalties from the 3rd party games. PC platforms can hold their servers fine enough.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

Dulfite on 19 October 2021
DonFerrari said:
padib said:

You're saying that because you probably don't understand the costs of maintaining servers for online play.

For one game a few servers are okay, but Nintendo as a platform holder, like Sony and Microsoft, pay for servers to compute the logic of online play for all the games they support. So no it's not greedy of them they are just covering costs.

It is greedy though if they do a lousy job and we pay for it.

That's my point.

They get that money on spades from the sale of the games and the royalties from the 3rd party games. PC platforms can hold their servers fine enough.

Game profits are a lot harder to get now days than they used to be. Game prices have not gone up alongside inflation. Development costs have skyrocketed as worker wages have increased in the tech era along with the expectation of massive games. The former Sony leader basically stated that each generation doubles in cost for games in a series to make. This isn't the 90's anymore. If they made enough profits off game sales before to maintain servers, they certainly are making less now.