Nintendo Switch

[Not Thread Owner]

6 minutes ago, Flub said:

 

I can understand their reasoning but frankly it's still shite.

 

I agree.

[Nespresso]

I don't mind paying for this service tbh. Back in the olden days I'd have to buy memory cards which were more expensive than the €20 a year this costs. However it would suck massively if there's only a specific selection of games that could make use of the cloud saving though. 

[NickC]

The price isn't too bad IMO. I mean, it's Nintendo, right? It's not going to be cheap.

 

It's frustrating for me though because Switch has been a new leaf for Nintendo. Overall they have surpassed my expectations. The hardware is great. The first party games have been amazing. The release slate has been better than expected. They have given a lot of people a taste of some exceptional indy games that they otherwise wouldn't have played, at fair prices considering the quality of the hardware.

 

I just wanted them to push online gaming forward a bit. People expect and deserve cloud saves now. Online gaming doesn't need to be as good as PlayStation and Xbox, but it should work with the hardware alone. The app thing is crazy.

 

Maybe they will make it all work and surpass my expectations again. But it looks like the bare minimum so far. I'd hoped for better than that.

[HarryBizzle]

I think I'd rather keep my £20 than have cloud saves. The NES games and online play doesn't even factor into it. The only Switch game I care about playing online is Splatoon 2 and I've had my fill of that already.

 

I look forward to seeing what changes they'll make to their barebones Switch mobile app now that they'll be charging for it. (hint: none).

 

Hopefully people will vote with their wallets and they'll either turn this thing into something half decent or can the charges.

[Junker]

could have been worse. We all knew it was coming eventually. I was worried they’d price it at £50 or something.

  Hopefully it means they won’t go banging on about it at E3 and we get to see games instead.

 

[Nespresso]

Don't get me wrong it's still the shittiest of solutions and the service itself seems depressingly bare bones but at the same time it's dirt cheap as well so... yeah I'm impartial I suppose.

[Marlew]

I'm actually glad I won't have to pay for some irascible teen to call me a 'faget' in Splatoon. I can just continue to imagine that's the translation of Booyah! 

[Azrael]

I know it's something we should expect these days but I'm just interested in how many have made use of Cloud backup saves on other consoles. I was getting annoyed by Nintendo being difficult but then realised I don't think I've ever used such a feature - or even know much about how to use it. 

[Broker]

Seems like money for nothing. I’m not too fussed about cloud saves, although having no way to transfer saves between consoles or whatever is shit. Probably just not bother with the games again if I lost my saves somehow, and it’s nice that’s not a concern on other consoles. It was a shitty thing to lock behind a paywall on PS3/4 and it’s a shitty thing to do here, especially with their incompetence meaning that we can’t do it with a flash drive.

 

Nintendo machines are much more about local play than online for me, there’s not a lot of games I’d want to play online, and the ones that are interesting the service is trash anyway. I wasted enough time getting disconnected from Mario Kart games and gave up on bothering with that a while ago. I’m certainly not paying a company who know nothing about online services to use their poorly functioning online system where I can’t even send someone a message and any voice chat requires some stupid phone app. Them using some library bullshit to try to get out of people being pissed off at having to pay again for the same NES games can fuck off as well.

 

Ultimately, I think I’ll just stop bothering with the online modes in Switch games.

 

15 hours ago, deKay said:

How is not free cloud saves and having to have an account for each member of your family different to, say, PSN and XBL?

 

My my kids can play online on their accounts on the PS4 and I’ve only paid for Plus once.

 

14 hours ago, Darhkwing said:

I am slightly concerned that a lot of the online games will dry up with players over this. 

 

Seems pretty likely, it’s not exactly an attractive service for most people. Not losing your saves if there’s a problem with the console, the same shit NES games again, access to an online service without features that have been standard for at least ten years in the rest of the industry. Where’s the benefit?

 

14 hours ago, ann coulter said:

 

I mean, it's also very weird to me that the same people who enthusiastically pay, what, £60 for an NES Mini with thirty games are up in arms at the prospect of paying £20 a year for at least 20 NES games. 

 

I think there’s probably quite a lot of people with Switches who didn’t happily pay for a NES Mini, and vice versa. You also get a cute recreation of the console that comes with the exact controller you played with as a kid. It’s a laser focused nostalgia play. This is just their latest shit version of the virtual console, shit value for the exact same games they’ve been milking since the Wii launched.

 

[Xevious]

6 hours ago, Alexlotl said:

So am I right that this is £18/$20/20EUR? Glad we've moved on from the "just change the currency symbol to get the UK price" model.

 

Pretty much nobody used that pricing equation for years, until the Brexit vote brought the currencies more in line again.

[Mitchell]

12 hours ago, rgraves said:

Every classic NES game will support voice chat via the Nintendo Switch Online smartphone app*.

 

[Bucky]

I'm a bit peeved this seems the end of Virtual Console dreams. I'd have loved to have played Super Punch Out, Advance Wars, Super Mario World on the train.  Maybe they'll be included with the service (in which case, not a bad thing) but it looks like a much lower priority now that the NES games are not just reissues, but new code with online components meaning straight ports are out.

[Hylian]

I suspect the absence of VC is to do with them still trying to sell the mini consoles. Once that's all done and dusted we'll see VC on Switch. The chance of them not trying to sell me SMK for the 4th time is pretty much 0.

[Not Thread Owner]

7 hours ago, Broker said:

 

My my kids can play online on their accounts on the PS4 and I’ve only paid for Plus once.

 

 

OK, how does this work? Because in order to play online in Minecraft my daughter has to use my account.

 

Hers is set as a child account on mine. What else needs doing?

[SMD]

They're abandoning the Virtual Console because they're leaving behind everything to do with the Wii's branding, it's a good excuse to get everyone to pay again for Super Mario 64 and the most likely motivator is that companies probably wanted more control over how they sell their back catalogue - like Sega Ages, the Arcade Archives and so on.

The VC was of its time and would've been a great idea if the Wii infrastructure was forward thinking. Fingers crossed the Switch family keeps moving your games forward so this is the last time.

[Beezer]

They are using the back catalogue to sell the subscription service. Starting small with NES to test the market. If it doesn’t sell, they will gradually add enough games until it is an irresistible prospect. They are going to want the vast majority of the user base on this service, otherwise they are restricting the player base for online games.

[Marlew]

"They've rebadged it, you fools." 

 

I also wonder whether the mobile/tablet emulation boom over the last five years or so has affected their approach. No longer is anyone amazed by the mere existence of retro gaming on the go, as we certainly once were.

 

To make it a more attractive proposition for many (and to charge everyone for some games they won't even play and wouldn't have bought, like PS+), the idea of a subscription service makes a lot of sense for Nintendo and it suits me just fine.

 

Sony have had a lot of money off me over the last five years and I have probably three games (which I both would have bought and already had done) to show for it. I don't consider the PS+ games 'free' and if they were any good, I would have already owned them.

 

Maybe that's another tangent. 

[shynra]

20 minutes ago, deKay said:

 

OK, how does this work? Because in order to play online in Minecraft my daughter has to use my account.

 

Hers is set as a child account on mine. What else needs doing?

 

Did you set the age correctly? Online play needs 7+ iirc/has to be a certain age to play online. I think that is why she cannot play online? Maybe? The one ps+ for online play should work. 

[Not Thread Owner]

1 minute ago, shynra said:

 

Did you set the age correctly? Online play needs 7+ iirc/has to be a certain age to play online. I think that is why she cannot play online? Maybe? The one ps+ for online play should work. 

 

Age is correct and she's over 7 (although wasn't when I set it up).

[Stanley]

52 minutes ago, Beezer said:

They are using the back catalogue to sell the subscription service. Starting small with NES to test the market. If it doesn’t sell, they will gradually add enough games until it is an irresistible prospect. They are going to want the vast majority of the user base on this service, otherwise they are restricting the player base for online games.

I think this is spot on. This way they won't damage the profits of indie developers, though they can still offer exclusive discounts to subscribers, and they can use their own enviable and massive back cat to sell the service. They could even introduce Switch games at some point to really give it a boost, especially if they make them time limited.

 

They're making more money from retro games anyway selling SNES mini and so on. 

[Strafe]

The separate app for voice chat is so ridiculous. Why are they doing it this way? What possible reason could they have? I'll end up paying £20 for the same functionality online games have now. (no real interest in playing NES games, I'm afraid)

[JPickford]

It's poor value IMO.  I'm not paying 20quid a year to protect my saves.   That should be free anyhow.   I don't give a shit about NES games I've already played and I don't use online enough to pay money for it.   The whole thing is a downgrade to the switch (no more occasional online games for me).

[Strafe]

Proper voice chat would make it worthwhile, I reckon. I play £40 or £50 for Live and PSN and rarely make use of the free games, so £20 for a full functioning online offering and party system (will switch even have that?) would make it worthwhile.

 

Is the switch so underpowered it can't handle voice chat in the background? I doubt it

[Simmy]

17 minutes ago, Strafe said:

Proper voice chat would make it worthwhile, I reckon. I play £40 or £50 for Live and PSN and rarely make use of the free games, so £20 for a full functioning online offering and party system (will switch even have that?) would make it worthwhile.

 

Is the switch so underpowered it can't handle voice chat in the background? I doubt it

 

I'm 99% sure the Vita had voice chat.

[Girth Certificate]

8 hours ago, Mitchell said:

 

*Goro*

 

Bhwahahahahaha

[Stanley]

22 minutes ago, Strafe said:

Is the switch so underpowered it can't handle voice chat in the background? I doubt it

God knows but when you look at the solution being offered with wires all over the place there must be some issue. It baffles me that it wasn't thought about during the initial planning and design.

[Marlew]

I understand why they would restrict voice comms to friends lists (safety/language, etc.) but I still don't understand why they restrict it to the app/phone except 'Japanese guys don't accustom to voice chat' and so they don't give one.

 

I'm surprised that anyone would begrudge twenty quid a year (!) to play online, though, when many of their biggest games are/will be online multiplayer and you pay more than double that for PS+, only for a load of shite games and regular service dropouts and maintenance.

[rgraves]

9 hours ago, Broker said:

My my kids can play online on their accounts on the PS4 and I’ve only paid for Plus once.

 

You only have to pay this once - the £31 family membership will cover up to 8 people, across multiple switches even.

 

Think of the £18 option as discounted if you only want single user, and the £31 option as if you want more open access for multiple people (on one or multiple Switches) - still half the price. If anything it's a more flexible model really.

 

I've made it very clear in this thread that I don't like what Nintendo are doing - I'd rather they just stay as they are and free. But, with that said, at least they have gone in cheap and appear to be making noises that more is to come (more games already confirmed, more offers/discounts etc). I mean at £18, if they offer even £3-4 off a few games here and there it's not going to take long to rake back the cost almost entirely anyway.

[Pavey]

Changing the subject, has anyone's Switch been bricked by using a 3rd party dock like the ones a few of us picked up on Ebay, or is it just the Nyko that supposedly did that?

[Stanley]

Most of us here knew it was coming and they've delayed it a year, so we've had at least a year for free. I think expecting them to carry on offering it for free is a tad naive. 

 

I don't use voice chat so it won't affect me but it's really shabby.