(Poll) Will You Plan on Paying for Nintendo Switch Online?

[LiX]

I can't do league either. I just want ranked gone. It's garbage and pointless.

This post, with the picture of Jigglypuff next to it, is just freaking hilarious.

 

[zzmorg82]

I’m buying it on the sole purpose of having access to the online services of other games and the Switch online features itself, not just Splatoon 2.

 

[Dewnose]

I can't do league either. I just want ranked gone. It's garbage and pointless.

You realize that if we remove all of that, not only will half of all Splatoon owners stop playing, but the rest will start playing Turf...

 

[Lonely_Dolphin]

It's not just Splatoon, though that is reason enough on it's own, but also Mario Kart, ARMS, Rocket League, Smash, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, and so ons. Realistically I've got no choice but to pay. I know it means I'm supporting a scam, but I can't give up playing all these games. Atleast it's just $20.

 

[zzmorg82]

Atleast it's just $20.

This right here is why Nintendo will be just fine revenue wise. $20 is the sweet spot for this service.

You just dropped $300+ for a Switch, what’s $20 extra to get online services?

What’s $20 out of the year worth to the average person? It’s nothing.

Nintendo knows exactly what they’re doing. The average person will be more willing to drop $20 on this compared to dropping $60 for PSN/Xbox Live.

 

[EarlyCuyler]

Yea lets charge money for service that only works with ONE GAME where no one uses our built in voice chat system in favor of discord because it isnt a complete pile of crap to setup and doesnt require the dumbest headphone setup ive ever seen

IN WHAT UNIVERSE IS THIS OKAY?

"oh but theyll add more games". Yea and those games will come with a "trial" for nintendo online like every single xbox and ps4 game comes with a few day trial for their respective online services. Right now there is absolutely NO REASON to even consider paying for nintendos online stuff. The games it works with are are literally only splatoon..for now.

Bad business model. Nintendo online right now isnt even worth $5.. Add something other than splatnet and ill consider it.

 

[Drew Sebastino]

A lot of the more casual players will drop out, leaving just the hardcore ones.

The problem is that the playerbase is made up of 3 groups of people, as I like to see it: Children, Casuals and the Competitives. And you'll get rid of 2 groups if you put up a paywall, namely the children and the casuals.

You guys are acting as if this is a bad thing! :p

This post, with the picture of Jigglypuff next to it, is just freaking hilarious.

Funny that the Jigglypuff wouldn't like competitive play.

This right here is why Nintendo will be just fine revenue wise. $20 is the sweet spot for this service.

You just dropped $300+ for a Switch, what’s $20 extra to get online services?

What’s $20 out of the year worth to the average person? It’s nothing.

Nintendo knows exactly what they’re doing. The average person will be more willing to drop $20 on this compared to dropping $60 for PSN/Xbox Live.

Except think of how many worthwhile online games there are for the Xbox One and PS4. You've got Splatoon 2, and that's about it for the Switch. Not to mention Microsoft and Sony's online infrastructure isn't **** either. (Look no further than the voicechat nightmare in the previous post for an example of how much worse Nintendo Switch's online is.) Had the online service started early this year, I would have paid for it no doubt, but by September, Splatoon 2 will have been out for over a year and many people (myself included) will have already gotten most all of the enjoyment to be had out of the game. $20 sounds reasonable enough, but if you're only going to play the game for an hour a week because you have nothing better to do, then even that relatively small amount is not worth it. It's also psychological; you'll always find that the jump from free to any price is where you'll find the largest drop in users, no matter how "fair" it is.

 

[LiX]

You guys are acting as if this is a bad thing! :p

Well mate, all jokes and irony aside: it is a bad thing. I know it won't bother me in ranked because most kids and casuals won't be S+ so you won't even notice they're gone. But I don't want to wait 5 minutes until a Turf War lobby is put together because of lack of players. "Wait 5 minutes - play 3 minutes"-scenarios is really what scares me the most about this. Cause this will drive out even more players.

 

[Ulk]

This right here is why Nintendo will be just fine revenue wise. $20 is the sweet spot for this service.

You just dropped $300+ for a Switch, what’s $20 extra to get online services?

What’s $20 out of the year worth to the average person? It’s nothing.

Nintendo knows exactly what they’re doing. The average person will be more willing to drop $20 on this compared to dropping $60 for PSN/Xbox Live.

This is the kind of attitude the community seriously needs to drop. 20$ is not nothing. You cannot imagine what we pay for nothing but a ransom. Online services have never been free. They're financed with our purchases and charged to us in every single product we buy. Like we pay the super market's cleaning lady with every little item that we pay. We are literally paying nothing but a ransom. The problem are the people who don't even know what they're paying for. Not even 1% of the amount we are paying them can be used to actually provide us with that awful p2p online infrastructure. They couldn't spend as much as we're giving them for the online services even if they tried.

The most similar product sales curve to the Switch is currently the Wii, which has even been surpassed by the Switch to a certain degree. Let's look at what we're paying them if we're assuming the same sales curve:

Around 40% of users subscribe to paid online services of the competition. Price Sensitivity would imply that, due to Nintendo's lower price, there'd be a lot more than 40%. But let's still go with 40%.

With the paid online services, they would theoretically earn:

Year 1: 14.86m sold copies * 40% * 0$ (Free Trial) = 0$
Year 2: 44.96m sold copies * 40% * 0$ (Free Trial) = 0$
Year 3: 67.45m sold copies * 40% * 20$ = 539.6m$
Year 4: 84.64m sold copies * 40% * 20$ = 677.12m$
Year 5: 94.97m sold copies * 40% * 20$ = 759.67m$
Year 6: 99.38m sold copies * 40% * 20$ = 795.04m$
Year 7: 100.90m sold copies * 40% * 20$ = 807.2$

That's over 3.500.000.000$ over the entire lifespan. For terrible p2p connections that are long accounted for in every product we already purchased. While this is of course an extremely rough calculation, in any scenario they cannot possibly spend this amount on their online service. It's almost pure revenue to them, nothing else. Paying for basically nothing but a ransom is shameful enough. I'm guilty of that too. Saying "It's just 20$" is just a low, however.

 

[Padre]

Of course they are making money, but what you get with that 20 is not nothing. Didnt they announce at least NES games for free with online multi. There will be browser too. Probably other functional stuff also. Virtual console might happen with GC and N64 stuff also.

 

[Windstar]

Alright, so some news just dropped a couple hours ago. Instead of writing an entire essay about this article, you can just read it instead.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/ninten...nlines-next-announcement-will-worth-wait/amp/

 

[Ulk]

Of course they are making money, but what you get with that 20 is not nothing. Didnt they announce at least NES games for free with online multi. There will be browser too. Probably other functional stuff also. Virtual console might happen with GC and N64 stuff also.

It's nothing. Nobody is paying for the laughable premium services. The only reason people pay for the premium services because it's a ransomware that denies you online services if you don't subcribe. We're not getting free GC or 64 titles either. Don't kid yourself. If they had that much up their sleeve, they wouldn't advertise their service with completely outdates SNES games. Don't forget that their initial plan was to give us one rented outdated title each month that you cannot play anymore after the month ends. Don't think they'll jump from that to anything luxurious. Nintendo has a reputation of being by absolute far the cheapest when it comes to additional services, discounts, deals and what not. Also a browser is not part of an online service. This is the most basic and no-brainer part of a console ever since the integration of online play.

 

[Ulk]

Alright, so some news just dropped a couple hours ago. Instead of writing an entire essay about this article, you can just read it instead.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/ninten...nlines-next-announcement-will-worth-wait/amp/

I don't know in what ways those are news. They have given zero details except that they're still working on the online service and putting more resources into it, which they say about almost everything that has been delayed. That's trivial information that is not really adding much to the topic. Not to say I don't appreciate the update.

 

[Windstar]

I don't know in what ways those are news. They have given zero details except that they're still working on the online service and putting more resources into it, which they say about almost everything that has been delayed. That's trivial information that is not really adding much to the topic. Not to say I don't appreciate the update.

I thought you guys would like the “the next announcement will be worth the wait” and figured it might stir up some conversation and speculation, but whatevs.

 

[Ulk]

I thought you guys would like the “the next announcement will be worth the wait” and figured it might stir up some conversation and speculation, but whatevs.

It's definitely worth speculating over. Updates are appreciated a lot.

 

[Green Waffles]

It's definitely worth speculating over.

Well ****
I was hoping I wasn't the most cynical poster on squidboards, but I found myself snorting as I read this =[

This online service will be the same as it is now, only with a price tag and a snes library attached as a self-justification for paying for a ripoff (that would collect dust since I almost only play Splatoon anyways). And believe me, I hope I am wrong

Here's hoping the "big news" is that splat devs managed to keep Splatoon2 free to play and the worst of it is that I can no longer play mario kart and arms online or that nintendo has figured out the secret to near flawless international match connection, with scarcely a difference between online and LAN, but I'd be an even bigger fool in hoping for this.

 

[CodyMKW]

yes because Nintendo deserves the money since they are the only good company

 

[Drew Sebastino]

Nintendo deserves the money

We already bought their $60 game that, quite frankly, took minimal resources to make. My sympathy for them is hovering around 0.

 

[Cyan]

yes because Nintendo deserves the money since they are the only good company

Brand loyalty is exactly why companies like Microsoft, Sony and Apple get away with outrageous stunts. Once you get your flock of sheep you can do anything with them and they’ll eat it up. They never stop to consider whether the company has devised a scam, they just blindly praise everything amd defend them to their last breath. Occasionally they overstep boundaries to the point the sheep bite back, but far too often their policies get implemented with no-one batting an eyelid.

Do you not think with the profits Nintendo make off the Switch and its games is enough to fund their atrocious online “infrastructure” (literally has no features to warrant that title)? Ulk has done some rough calculations on how much money Nintendo will profiteer off of should the Switch follow success levels of the Wii and have 40% paying for online. Half a billion pounds a year for a service that costs them a minuscule percentage of that revenue. All of Nintendo’s games are Peer-to-Peer, meaning we only pay to connect to a matchmaking server which withdraws all input once matches start and our internet handles all the data transfer, not Nintendo. We just feed back data when matches end and we’re free to connect to others (and recieve our own connections). Unless Nintendo magically flies into the 21st century and gives us dedicated servers (or at least server side P2P) we’re being held at ransom and paying for the privilege of using our own internet (which we pay for) to connect to others for matches.

There’s no such thing as a “good company”. At the end of the day, they are corporate companies looking to make as much profit as possible to expand and conquer. As long as the shareholders are paid and the pot of money increases, they couldn’t care less about the consumer provided that they don’t lose potential revenue from sales of their goods. They are not your friend, they just want your hard-earned cash.

 

[Mr. Squiggly Squid]

Yup, I knew Drew would’ve posted a thread like this. It was just a matter of time.