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Forums - Gaming Discussion - What is so bad about Nintendo's online service vs. the others (PSN, Xbox Live)

d21lewis said:

I'm sure everything I'm about to say has been said already but,  here goes...

Also, I use Xbox online instead of Playstation so some of these may or may not apply to PSN. I also have Nintendo's online service. 

- If you see your friend playing online, you can't join request to join them. You can't message them. You basically know they're online and that's it. 

- You can't follow their "feed". Screenshots, accomplishments,  etc. You don't get thar.  Just a list of games that they play and how long they have played it. 

- On Xbox,  every game is automatically backed up.  No matter what you play on (console, PC, another console,  streaming) as soon as you log in, your save is there.  On Nintendo, it's a whole process of restoration that doesn't always work. My Bayonetta save is backed up but won't transfer to my Switch Lite. Animal Crossing wasn't supported and needed an entire transfer app.

- On Xbox, digital games are available on the primary Xbox whether online or offline. They're also available on a second Xbox as long as you're logged in. You can literally buy a game and play it on two different systems at the same time.

-Same thing applies to the Online service. You can use it on the primary system no matter what and on a secondary system as long as you're logged in. 

- You can message, follow, send friend requests to people who are not your friend. 

- You can "gift" games to other gamers as long as you know their name

- You can group chat, group message, send pics, and follow specific game communities 

- You can "co-pilot" someone else's game.  If you're watching them play (streaming) they can turn the controls over to you and you can play their game. 

-Leader boards for most games compare your scores, achievements, bullets fired, miles driven, etc to your friends 

- "free" Xbox 360 and Xbox One games every month. Some great. Some such.

- Monthly discounts for subscribers 

- Any game captures or screenshots are readily available at any time on your mobile device 

- even without subscription, you can stream/play on a PC as long as it's on the same network. Possibly a mobile device as well. 

-Full web browsers (a full and complete version of Microsoft Edge that allows you to save and download content to your system)

-Mod support for a handful of games

I know I'm missing a lot more features. And I know a lot of what I'm posting won't appeal to you but there you go.  Meanwhile, on Nintendo I've never successfully played with one of my close to 100 friends. On the Wii U (oddly enough), I have. I haven't played Mario Kart 8 online in a while but when I did, I always lost connection after a few games. I couldn't even log into Resident Evil's website without paying for the online service. $20 a year is basically nothing and I do have great nostalgia for the SNES Era...and great ptsd for the NES Era. I loathe the N64 and have no strong feelings for the Sega Genesis, either way.  Believe it or not,  Nintendo is my favorite gaming company but their service is not even on par with the original Xbox or PS2--systems that came out two decades ago!

Here's my Switch ID:SW-0666-6288-1304

That's odd.  Now granted I only play Splatoon2 online but there were 4 or 5 of us on here that used to regularly play together.  Every splatfest we would have a team.  Sometimes one of us would drop but it wasn't constant. I have spent a very small fraction on software for the Switch compared to the WiiU so my experience with any other multi-player games on Switch is non existent.

I can't even remember who it was/is now on this site was/is on my family plan for the switch.  I had plenty of family members to add to the plan, but had a spot or 2 left open and gave it to them.  35 a year is peanuts .... $180 for 3 people in the house to play Splatoon2 at the same time perhaps not so much.  The other 2 have always handled digital game sharing better in my opinion and now that I've bitched I'll acknowledge that that is a whole other discussion.



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Well since you asked, what you get with Xbox live and PSN is up to date online functionality and both services continue to add features and innovate. Nintendo however is still missing features from 2 generations ago.



GoOnKid said:
ZyroXZ2 said:

I know I can transfer it to my phone, I've done it tons of times during MHRise to send videos to other people on weapon combo damage, and it is NOT hosted by Nintendo's servers: it's sent to your phone directly via the Switch through WiFi.

And clearly I was referring to the mobile app.  Did you know I DON'T need to pair my phone up briefly to download it from a browser with the Xbox app?  That when I hit the capture button on the controller, the Xbox auto-uploads it to their servers, and all I do is grab my phone, pull up the app, and everything is right there ready to download to my phone?  You might think you can take all the bullets to save Nintendo from this one, but you're seriously outnumbered.  And I'm not talking public opinion: Nintendo's "online" aspects are massively outpaced by literally every platform in gaming with the only exception being Miiverse, the one good online thing they did (despite its community being, erhm, a bit eccentric...) that they canned.  They literally do NOT understand online gaming at its core (friend codes, ANYONE?!), and then they also took away the VC which I literally am included in the many people that liked it.  Nintendo literally took away two of their good things and gave us... whatever the fuck NSO is lol

To whoever it was that said most Switch games are on cloud saves:

No, the cloud saves do not include most games, just the popular exclusives and bigger games.  I can literally point to games right now on my Switch that don't have it because the cloud saves are based on the game, not on the user profile.  Another backwards-minded "online" concept of theirs...

I'm not taking any bullets, I just can't figure out how something so insanely minor can be such a big deal. Moleholes and mountains. Alright I admit it, I was wrong, the images are not on Nintendos servers. So what? How does this matter? Genuine question, how many people even send screenshots around? Of course you will say a lot. Of course I will say a few.

The most important complaint I hear is bad connectivity, and I'd argue that this is probably the only relevant point at all in this entire discussion. But, shockingly enough, this problem exists with Playstation and Xbox as well, however only Nintendo gets dissed about it. Why is that? Because people are fooled into thinking that a high price must mean a high quality service. Dropouts, connectivity issues, wifi problems, lag, staggering and buffering, all this happens on all consoles. But shhhh, that's not what the crowd wants to hear.

It's about the quality of service that Nintendo's "online" functionality does not serve.  Maybe you should have quoted my entire post where this was simply another point that you attempted to refute only to find out that the competition does things like this much better.

And no, who says I said a lot?  Sometimes, I want to share things with people directly and NOT post it to social media, and the Xbox makes that very easy and convenient to do.  Nintendo does not.  This permeates into everything else people are mentioning in the thread, too.  Something as simple as seeing friends online and sending a message or a game invite are done so easily, except with Nintendo where we may pay less, but it's called "online" with barely any online functions.

The issue is not "bad connectivity", it is consistently the absolute lack of functionality or quality in its methods.  The bad connectivity is because of how decades old some of the netcode they use is in their games is (namely Smash, unironically one of their most popular franchises...), or the lack of simple things like matchmaking (which would have made Mario Party's online function an absolute hoot...).  Instead, people are left to do things in roundabout ways to "solve" the problem that really should be made easier by the very people they're paying.  "Just go find a forum to play with randos in Mario Party".  No, I'd like to be able to turn it on, hit the "Quick Match" option, and be matched up with others who want to bust their controllers trying to beat me in minigames.



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