Nintendo is finishing support for Splatoon 2 this Christmas. If they were continuing to support it longer-term due to the service, perhaps with a long-term roadmap to have dedicated server support and monthly mini-expansions, I would be happy to pay for that. I would pay more than £20 a year for this sort of thing. But it doesn't look like that kind of thing is on the cards.
This is the biggest kicker for me - I just don't feel that I'd be actually paying for a service.
I'm hoping this flops so Nintendo are forced to offer something that can actually justify the online paywall, but I'm betting it does just-acceptably-well-enough so that doesn't happen.
I'm hoping this flops so Nintendo are forced to offer something that can actually justify the online paywall, but I'm betting it does just-acceptably-well-enough so that doesn't happen.
I hope that too, but I think it would have to be an abject failure for that, purely because they're not supplying any content, so it can't really fail. The costs are so low that they'll definitely at least break even.
I hope that too, but I think it would have to be an abject failure for that, purely because they're not supplying any content, so it can't really fail. The costs are so low that they'll definitely at least break even.
Break even? Their just adding a paywall to something that already works, literally flipping a switch for profit.
Break even? Their just adding a paywall to something that already works, literally flipping a switch for profit.
Nah, there are costs. They're small, comparatively miniscule, but they do exist. I just didn't say "charging something for nothing" because if I had said that, someone would've been along to say "weeeelllll it isn't nothing".
I hope that too, but I think it would have to be an abject failure for that, purely because they're not supplying any content, so it can't really fail. The costs are so low that they'll definitely at least break even.
Sadly, agreed. The only thing that will make Nintendo reconsider is a post-paywall playerbase so small that customers who do end up paying complain about worse matchmaking than in the free days.
I hope that too, but I think it would have to be an abject failure for that, purely because they're not supplying any content, so it can't really fail. The costs are so low that they'll definitely at least break even.
It can fail if it badly damages sales of any games with online features. Which I can’t help thinking it will. The question I think will be whether the people who just pay it anyway outweigh that damage and I think it probably could because I think it’s cheap enough that many will go for it even if they play just one game online on the system.
Not an overreaction. Don't want NES games, will never play online. Do want the occasional game to play on the go but if you look at the 4 games I have for it, Zelda, Skyrim, stardew valley and Minecraft you'll see they are all long games. The sort of game where your investment in time becomes more valuable than the console itself.
This weekend I have been playing Minit on Switch. It’s brilliant. Look it up and check it out. It’s taking my mind off the fact that I’m very much not playing Shenmue on the system.
I think you should go into this prepared to have a banned console and account at the end of it. I'll take the precaution of not updating the firmware, removing my account, not going online with it ever etc. But it's possible that Nintendo will find a way to detect that a unit has run custom firmware at some point in the past and ban that console.
Comment