Nintendo Switch Online Needs MAJOR Improvements

*Sigh* Nintendo, Nintendo, Nintendo. Why do you have to be so prehistoric? Outdated? Out of touch? There are million words I could use to describe how Nintendo can be.  The company makes many an outstanding game, but when it comes to the issue of online gaming, they are one seriously odd duck.

In this case, I am of course, talking about Nintendo Switch Online. It is in two words (shocker), not great. In a few more words, one wouldn't even consider it good. Hoo boy, everyone under the sun has had something to say about Nintendo Switch Online. Negative Nancy's are out in full force, but their negativity here is completely justified. I was raring to go to talk about this but as last week went on, I saw so many recommended videos pop up on Nintendo Switch Online on YouTube, that my enthusiasm to discuss the matter was sucked right out of me. Watching only a few of them had given me more than my fill. That isn't to say I think gamers expressing their frustration over Nintendo Switch Online is wrong, but the amount of videos that more or less said the exact same thing did inspire me to come at it from a different angle. Make no mistake, I agree with everyone else out there that Nintendo Switch Online is a joke but rather than just go on and on about why it sucks, I think it would be better to talk about what Nintendo could to improve it as well as the very few positives.

The one good thing Nintendo has over it's competitors is the price. No matter how you slice it, you pay less for Nintendo's online service. $20 for a year's subscription versus the $60 Sony and Microsoft are asking. Even the 3 month plan is cheaper than the other guys at $8 compared to the $25 you'd pay for to game online with the PS4 and XBO. If the posts in Splatoon 2 are any indication, more people are annoyed by the fact that they have to pay to play Switch games with online features online than they are the shoddy service itself. Microsoft was the first to offer a paid online subscription service and Sony followed suit with the PS4. It was only a matter of time until Nintendo jumped on the pay to play online console games online bandwagon. There's plenty to gripe about when it comes to Nintendo Switch Online. The all around cheap price, however, isn't something I feel warrants griping about.

NES games. We've seen these time and again, but it is a nice bonus for signing up for Nintendo's Online service. More are to be added in the future so I hope we get some of those games that Nintendo has seldom given any time in the spot light. For the 60 plus games that were released on the Wii's Virtual Console, there were a plethora of games that didn't make it. The NES version of Contra being omitted from all forms of the Virtual Console service made absolutely no sense. I expect the Castlevania trilogy to show up at some point as well as Super C so it would be cool if Konami could get their crap together and give us the NES version of Contra.

There are currently 20 NES games on the Nintendo Switch Online
with more on the way.

Do I think the NES games on this online service makes up for killing off the Virtual Console on the Switch? No way. And while everyone is jumping the gun over the latest data findings, getting their hopes up that a Virtual Console service is coming to the Switch, a lot of these eager people are quick to forget that Nintendo themselves said that there will be no Virtual Console on the Switch. As much as we want it, Nintendo has stated that it is a no go. If Nintendo is planning to bring their classic games to the Switch through Nintendo Switch Online, they better keep those games rolling out at a steady pace. The drip feed release for Virtual Console games on the Wii as well as the Wii U was unbearable to anyone that was there at the beginning so I find it amazing that we got 20 NES games right off the bat, even though some of them (Baseball, Soccer, Tennis) are just plain bad. I think some are still waiting for Nintendo to roll out the SNES games on this thing as well as N64 titles and if Nintendo wants to really make it worth our while, more than the usual suspects need to show up. Both the NES and SNES libraries are far too deep to stick to everything we've seen before. On the Nintendo front, they could bring us games that were never released outside of Japan such as Joy Mecha Fight and Marvelous: Another Treasure Island or the unreleased 8 and 16-bit Fire Emblem games. In recent years we've had games that were Japan only make it outside of the Land of the Rising Sun with English translations (Monster World IV) so Nintendo really has no excuse. If Nintendo is set on keeping the Virtual Console dead on the Switch then they had better bring us games from their old catalog by the truckloads. 

It still rubs me the wrong way that cloud saves are not supported by all games, especially a title like Splatoon 2, a game that is a pretty huge deal. You've got people that have invested hundreds, if not, thousands of hours into that game and Nintendo doesn't want Splatoon 2 to have cloud save support because of cheaters? Hey, Nintendo, cheaters are still going to be doing their business with games that support cloud save. To punish an entire player base over the wrongful actions of a few is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen and I've seen Nintendo do a lot of dumb things. Nintendo, you gotta find a better solution to dealing with cheaters because this one freaking sucks.

On the plus side of the cloud save issue, Nintendo is going to let us recover our saved data if our subscription expires. The Big N is going to give us up to six months to resubscribe to their service to get cloud saves back. Why on Earth this information didn't reach us on day one is puzzling. This would have helped diminish some of the backlash over Nintendo Switch Online. I have no idea what sort of miscommunication at Nintendo caused this, but that was a fairly big blunder on their part.

Perhaps more than anything, Nintendo Switch Online needs dedicated servers. Right now, we use peer to peer online play and nothing is worse than running into a laggy player. During the Retro vs Modern Splatoon 2 Splatfest, I splatted a roller and after he was taken out, his roller was still going and I was splatted! Nintendo is having us pay to play their games online now so we should have dedicated servers for more optimal online playing experiences.

If you want a recommendation from me as if you should or shouldn't get Nintendo Switch Online, I honestly don't have an answer for you. In the end, you are the only one who can decide if you feel you should pull the trigger on this or not. As for myself, I love playing Splatoon 2 online and I had a blast playing Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U and I want to do it again on the Switch with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, so I already dropped my twenty bones last week. I do like the NES games but I still feel the overall service is shoddy at best and Nintendo really needs to work at making it better. When, if they do, maybe so many gamers will stop looking at the company with their arms folded in annoyance and anger.