By Nelson Schneider - 10/10/21 at 03:00 PM CT
At the end of September 2021, Nintendo tried to be a uniter, rather than a divider, by revealing something so outrageous, so wantonly greedy, so lazy, and so stupid that every gamer should have been united in their disdain for it… Of course, Nintendo fanboys, as always, jumped to the corporation’s defense.
What was this egregious sin committed by the House of Mario? They revealed their plans to add emulation of Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games to their online subscription service.
Now, CLEARLY I hate both the N64 AND the Genesis, so I’m OBVIOUSLY too biased to hold a legitimate opinion. Isn’t that right, Comments Section?
Yeah, no, this goes beyond what I personally like or dislike, since Nintendo isn’t simply adding these terrible consoles’ games to the existing subscription – perhaps giving it some minor semblance of ‘value’ in the process. Instead, Nintendo will be creating a new subscription tier, currently just dubbed “Plus Expansion,” that will require Nintendo console owners to pay MORE MONEY each year in order to unlock this dubious perk.
The fact that anyone can defend this blatant cash grab is in-EFFING-sane! Nintendo has always had the worst online feature-set in the console space. The only reason Nintendo even started charging money for this lack-of-features was the fact that “everyone else was doing it,” and it seemed to be less self-destructive than the proverbial “jumping off a bridge.” The first year+ of the Switch’s lifespan showed that the company could get by perfectly well without charging for basic features like online P2P multi-player and Cloud save backups, but leaving money on the table is leaving money on the table, and as a for-profit corporation, Nintendo couldn’t let itself be the only competitor to not participate in Games as a Service, even if not participating would have bought them plenty of good-will amongst customers.
Unfortunately, we still don’t know how much Nintendo plans to charge for this V.I.P.-level package. But we DO know, at least, that however much it is, it will be TOO much! Someone desperately needs to inform the Powers that Be at Nintendo that telling a bad joke over and over doesn’t somehow make it funny.
UPDATE: It turns out the Plus Expansion is FIFTY FREAKING DOLLARS! ($50 USD)
Comments
Matt - wrote on 11/04/21 at 08:26 PM CT
Nintendo clearly needs to rethink their entire online strategy. I still find it maddening that it is required to sync saves and have any type of backup, especially since hardware can break (especially in the hands of young ones). I pay for only to have the peace of mind that hours of gameplay (only for some games) isn't lost if a console dies. What's also sad is that not all games even support online backups. The simple solution to game files would be to let users save them on a SD card and then transfer them between systems easily, but Nintendo won't ever do that, and we know why....
dbarry_22 - wrote on 10/12/21 at 02:48 PM CT
The fact that they revealed it and didn't tell us the price blatantly shows they are still trying to figure out how much of an increase they can get away with and they are gauging the public reception of this "extra tier".
I didn't get the online subscription for Nitnendo's pathetic library of NES and SNES games. I'm basically doing it so I can play games online with my friends. Even then if you attempt to play Smash with 3 or 4 people you no idea what kind of experience you're going to get. That's something forgivable if it was free but the fact that I pay money for it is frustrating. Other games have been quite smooth though, at least for me.
Anything more than a $5 a year increase and I absolutely will not get this "tier" of service and even then I still might not. We shall see what it actually ends up costing.
