Switch Online 5 Years Later: Finally Worth It?

Nintendo Switch Online is Nintendo’s paid online service for the Switch, the successor to Nintendo Network and ‘competitor’ to Playstation network and Xbox Live. Since its announcement in early 2017, it’s been a subject of great controversy. Playing games online on Nintendo consoles had previously been free, and now we’re expected to pay for it?

To be honest, I think more people should have seen it coming. Microsoft unfortunately started the trend of consoles charging users for playing online with the original Xbox, and Sony followed in their footsteps with the launch of the PS4. It was inevitable that Nintendo would jump on eventually.

So they did

During the Nintendo switch press conference in 2017, Nintendo revealed the service to the disappointment of many. However, there was hope that this could still end up being a good thing overall. Nintendo has never been known for their amazing online services previously. Xbox and playstation both had features like messaging, party systems, voice chat, and game invitations which are now seen as pretty basic online gaming standards. Nintendo on the other hand was missing some of these, with the others being done in a clunky way or inconsistently.

For example, on the Wii U you could video call friends, but only in a specific app which can’t be open at the same time as any games. Certain games would support voice chat, but how it worked depended on what they decided for each game. So in games like smash bros and Mario kart you could talk to your friends while in the lobby, but not while actually playing for some reason. The Wii U did have Miiverse, which was pretty cool (sometimes) and allowed you to message your friends in a more convientent way than back on the Wii. The 3DS also had miiverse but you couldn’t message friends through it, and friends had to be added through randomly generated friend codes rather than your custom username. See what I mean about inconsistency?

So, while there was of course disappointment that Nintendo was charging for online now, there was definitely hope that they would finally get with the times and provide a modern robust service like the other consoles did. They also promised us the now infamous switch online app for voice chat, play appointments, and the fact that NES and SNES games would be available for subscribers to download. This was a disappointing right from the start, as it implied that virtual console would not be returning on Switch.

At the time, while I was let down that switch online was going to paid, the promise of basically anything new regarding the switch was exciting. I was so used to how it all worked on Wii U that the idea of a fresh, new, modern service was quite appealing, and I’m sure others felt the same.



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