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+--- Thread: Nintendo Online Details - Still Terrible (& No VC) (/showthread.php?tid=7128)
Nintendo Online Details - Still Terrible (& No VC) - A Black Falcon - 17th May 2018
Nintendo released more information about their online service recently, and... it's still really bad, just like it was before, except now you will have to spend $20 a year to continue using their unforgivably horribly thought through cellphone-required online gaming network. Thanks. Nintendo saw the dollar signs from Sony and Microsoft's paid online services and are copying them but with a worse network and less reward for paying. At least the price is lower, and that is nice, but I'd rather get better services than a low price for something no good, so that's not worth too much.
That said, the big announcement here is perhaps that with your subscription you get access to 20 NES games on the Switch. However, a full Virtual Console service is not coming, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Seriously, I thought Nintendo likes making money! A VC service, where people pay for games, would probably be more profitable than this online network will be, particularly when you could just do both, like how Sony and MS give you 'free' games which you need to continue subscribing to play, or you can pay for access to the game as long as the consoles' internet network stays up. But no, the Switch will continue to have no classic Nintendo console games available for purchase, only arcade and Neo-Geo games. I know Nintendo has choices to make here -- should they go harder in on a subscription service for access to their old games, with different payment tiers for access to different consoles and such as some people have suggested online, or should they bring back a traditional paid classic-games shop like Virtual Console? But the problem is, the Switch released over a year ago, and we still have no answers to what Nintendo's answer to that decision is; it's still 'no VC or full subscription service for you, enjoy our new games and classic arcade games!'. That's okay, but it's throwing away all kinds of money, given how many people surely would buy their favorite Nintendo classics yet again if Nintendo offered them for sale!
Seriously, still not seeming to have made a decision, this far into the Switch's life, for what to do with their potentially valuable classic library is really strange. Nintendo is usually good at making good financial decisions...
Otherwise though, so long as this online service mostly requires a cellphone it's awful and needs to go, so not much else has changed.
Nintendo Online Details - Still Terrible (& No VC) - Dark Jaguar - 18th May 2018
Not to mention that, well, they have up until now let us play games online for free. It also bears repeating that their online network, just as set of features, is nowhere near what Sony or MS offer. MS and Sony baked their online function directly into the OS of their systems, and all those features work regardless of the game's own programming. In fact, even if a developer wanted to they have no power to lock out any of those features. This is as it should be. Nintendo, by contrast, allows developers to decide whether or not the user's own save files can be copied to Nintendo's servers or not (this is in addition to the fact that cloud saving is currently the ONLY means of getting saved data off the Switch).
Nintendo really needs to rethink how they handle their features, and in fact how they even program their OS at a fundamental level. Right now, features like screen shots and going back to the home menu are handled by in-game code responding to button presses. This means a game can pick moments when the "home" button doesn't even work, and infamously Sonic Mania had a glitch where pressing the home button during the opening FMV would slow the game down, and it woudln't respond properly for several seconds. If the OS intercepted those commands directly, instead of the game needing to be coded to catch commands, this wouldn't have happened.
Further, any and all friend list functionality should be managed solely by the OS. This includes one very basic function, forming a persistent party that can travel from one game to the next without issue. And yes, voice chat should be a built in system feature.
I admire their parental controls and the additional cell phone application for that. They do parental controls better than the competition, but their online services continue to lag far far behind. The inclusion of 20 retro games with the service? Well, from everything I have heard, users won't "own" those games at all. They disappear the moment someone stops paying for them. I refuse to "rent" balloon fight. I don't care what online functions they added, the local play should still function just fine. Just let me own the games. Remember this, the XBox 360's free giveaways are permanent. They don't care if you cancel subscription. That change in behavior happened with the XBox One.
The hard thing is explaining this to people who ONLY own Nintendo systems. Trying to explain what online features Nintendo doesn't have is like trying to explain color to the colorblind. I have had someone flat out call me a liar when I said XBox Live lets you carry an online party from one game to the next, as they carefully explained to me that "one game's coding isn't compatible with another, what you are describing is literally impossible", and completely ignoring what I and everyone else were telling them about how the OS handles parties and friends entirely, and all the game needs to do is "plug in" to the party and pull that data.
Nintendo Online Details - Still Terrible (& No VC) - A Black Falcon - 20th May 2018
... That's a crazy story there, I would have thought that by this point people would have played an online game somewhere other than on Nintendo...
But yeah, everything you say is very much true. You should always be able to return to the system menu by hitting Home; it's annoying how on all of Nintendo's systems with a Home button sometimes it's disabled. They need actual online gaming support, built in to the OS of course and not in a terrible cellphone app. (This one is so obvious it shouldn't need to be said...) Having cloud save backup of save files included with the subscription is nice, but on some other platforms cloud save backup is free. At least it's something though, the Switch has badly needed a way to get save files off of the thing since its release!
Quote:I admire their parental controls and the additional cell phone application for that. They do parental controls better than the competition, but their online services continue to lag far far behind.
I guess having the cellphone app as a secondary option thing is fine, sure, but the way they lock so many core online features behind it is utterly insane.
Quote:The inclusion of 20 retro games with the service? Well, from everything I have heard, users won't "own" those games at all. They disappear the moment someone stops paying for them. I refuse to "rent" balloon fight. I don't care what online functions they added, the local play should still function just fine. Just let me own the games. Remember this, the XBox 360's free giveaways are permanent. They don't care if you cancel subscription. That change in behavior happened with the XBox One.
Ownership is outdated, it's subscription services for everything now! See: streaming services for video, Xbox Game Pass, etc...
Nintendo Online Details - Still Terrible (& No VC) - Dark Jaguar - 20th May 2018
Ice Climber sucks. There I said it. The concept is ok, but the jumping is absolutely horrible. I enjoy Balloon Fight (Joust), and I enjoy Clu Clu Land, but Ice Climber? No thank you.
Nintendo Online Details - Still Terrible (& No VC) - A Black Falcon - 21st May 2018
I don't know, its jumping is weird but I'd probably rather play it than CluCluLand... somehow that games' controls just don't feel great, for me.