Based on official images shared by X user Ethan_ThisGuy, “the goal is to work with others to fully ‘develop’ a massive, expansive planet by utilizing creativity and framed resources.” New lands, enemies, and resources will appear while players progress across the planet. One core part of the experience are Beacons, which “emit a healing light that purifies and develops the land.” The description points out how players “repeat the process until their current Planetary Block is considered fully developed.”

Playtest begins on Oct 23rd for selected users that have Nintendo Online + Expansion Pack

Source

Well that’s certainly not what I was expecting.

Nintendo continuing their tradition of putting their own spin on genres it seems, much like Splatoon was their take on the online shooter.

MMOs aren't my cup of tea personally, but plenty of people do like them so I can potentially see an audience for this if the execution is good.

If it's an MMO, I certainly don't see Switch being discontinued any time soon. They need an affordable entry level model to secure mass players.

I do wonder on second thoughts if this is a full fledged game, or more of a demo they're using to playtest this kind of thing for future titles, like if it's just a trial run for a first party MMO on Switch 2 or something.

Hopefully we find out more soon.

Okay, this is... something. Probably need to see gameplay video before I make my judgement. But I generally enjoy when creativity is part of the game.

"Media not displayed"? Was this an intentional choice?

Images are gone. Hate to be late to the party

I updated the post

I have similar thoughts. First of all I doubt this is coming to Switch alone as the Switch is almost done, maybe once Switch 2 is out it'll be released on both systems so it is available to everyone on NSO.

But I'm wondering whether this will be an actual game you buy, or just a 'feature' of NSO expansion pack to get more people buying that and act as a universal community hub game for NSO users (which I think would be really cool and would signal that Nintendo is taking their online setup more seriously next gen).