Nintendo Online Details - Still Terrible (& No VC)

[A Black Falcon]

... 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!

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.

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Ownership is outdated, it's subscription services for everything now!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...