Nintendo Promises More Benefits for Paid Online Service
Late last January, Nintendo announced that it would finally launch its paid online subscription service for the Switch later this year. While many people are understandably wary about paying for an online service that Nintendo provides, given its previous track record, Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima and executive officer Shinya Takahashi assure people that they have many things planned for the service that are sure to please their audience.
During a recent investor Q&A, Kimishima described their online service as an effort to diversify how people interact with the Nintendo Switch and to attract more customers to the platform. He also mentioned that they have allocated a lot of their resources for this service to make sure that it launches without any issues.
With regard to how they plan to actually make the service popular and profitable, he discussed the company's philosophy on the matter. "It is less about the mechanism and more a question of what kinds of products we can offer, and the spread of the service will depend on the whether consumers want what we offer."
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Takahashi offered his own opinion on the matter as well. "We have some ideas about how to make Nintendo Switch Online appealing when it becomes a for-pay service, so I think our next announcement will be worth the wait," he said.
In the end, it is a vague sentiment and one that boils down to waiting to see what exactly Nintendo plans to offer that could match services like PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live. As it stands, the only benefits Nintendo Switch Online seems to have is the ability to play online multiplayer (albeit through their weird mobile interface) and a compilation of free classic games. Not exactly the strongest sales pitch unless people only bought a Switch for online.
Nintendo Switch Online is set to officially launch in September for $3.99 a month. Once the service begins, anyone who is not subscribed to it will no longer be able to play games online on the Switch.
