Nintendo is a company that is slow to get with the times. While everyone was enjoying their high-powered seventh generation consoles––mainly the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360––the revolutionary Nintendo Wii was chugging along with its underpowered specs. Nintendo made the same mistake in the eighth generation of consoles, with the tragic failure of the Wii U.
However, with the Nintendo Switch, the company is trying something new that they announced with the release of the console: a service that a consumer has to pay for in order to play games that feature online components.
Games like "Splatoon 2," "Mario Kart 8," "Mario Tennis" and "ARMS" will no longer offer free online service once Nintendo Switch Online launches in September. Nonetheless, what does that mean for players like us?
Well, it means that we simply can't play these games like how we used to anymore.
We shouldn't be opposed to this change though, as it's a trend that's been brewing in the gaming industry for years now––starting with Microsoft's Xbox Live system in 2002 and Playstation Network in 2006.
Nintendo is simply trying to get on that train. Not only that, but it's an easy way for the company to make back the money that they lost during the seventh generation consoles.
It's not like there are no extra benefits to the service, either. Once purchased, a player can play 20 classic NES games with online play, access to save data cloud backup, and an enhanced Nintendo Switch Online app experience.
Cloud backups of data surprised people the most, as Nintendo isn't known for doing many things regarding Internet services. However, they've slowly been dipping their toes with the Nintendo Switch Online app and games such as "Miitomo" and their newest venture, "Dragalia Lost."
People were quite in discourse when the announcement about NES games went live. With the Virtual Console (Nintendo's way of bringing their old games to the present) existing since the Wii era, consumers have bought and rebought various NES, SNES, and Gameboy games time and time again.
With this new service, will the virtual console ever see a resurgence with even more old games?
Let's hope that Nintendo does things right with this service, and pray that virtual console will live on.
