A community for everything Nintendo. Games, news, discussions, stories etc.
Game | Date
|
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book [S2] | May 21 Rhythm Heaven: Groove | Jun 02 StarFox [S2] | Jun 25 Splatoon Raiders [S2] | Jul 23 Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave [S2] | 2026 The Duskbloods [S2] | 2026 Pokémon Winds & Waves [S2] | 2027
[S2] means Switch 2 only.
Including two previously unreleased titles, Zero Racers and Dragon Hopper. Actually huge, up until now these were lost media.
On principle, not paying a freaking subscription for the right to access old games, previously unreleased or not. We used to be able to keep our games.
Honestly it's difficult to find these old consoles and games. A sub for them wouldn't be too bad since most people don't really play them that much. It's more for the normies that don't know much about Emulation honestly.
Plus the sub is reasonably priced compared to the prices of Pay-station and MicroSlops Xbox core. I introduced some folks into the world of Emulation due to the sub funnily enough.
There is literally no reason for it to be a sub compared to a one-time payment. Except of course in the sense that having customers pay for subs, forget about them and keep paying for nothing at all is the holy grail of content distribution nowadays.
Virtual console, though maybe a bit expensive for what it was, used to let you keep your games.
Honestly there isn't really a difference between it being a digital license and a subscription. The service for both can go down and there would be no way to play them officially. There is Emulation but the average person wouldn't really seek it out. It would mainly be the enthusiast that seeks out emulation.
The sub is bundled with the online play servers and you get a few extra perks for it. Nintendo is a business and server maintenance and costs aren't free, now if they made it to where you need to pay a separate sub for the classic games then I would be upset and agree with you.
That is the benefits of having physical media, which is why I fully support physical releases. I don't like game key cards for the same reasons why I don't like digital. But if they bring classic games back with a subscription, it's still a net benefit for those who use NSO since most game libraries are available.
This is not the base online subscription, which is the part giving you access to online servers.
The so-called "expansion pack" subscription costs much more, and is only for limited access to emulators and a couple DLC for Switch games (like Mario Kart and Animal Crossing). I don't like my games being kept hostage to a sub. This fee is literally just that.
My VC games are still there and playable on my Wii, Wii U and 3DS. I bought them (sure, technically, a licence, like every video game ever released, even physical. But let's see them revoke it).
Everything you point out is literally working against this subscription.
You can get digital games that are not tied to a subscription, and while the download server might be shut down at some point, if you still have it on your system, it still works. NSO emulators won't, because they routinely check whether your subscription is still active, even though everything is downloaded and runs locally on your console.
The NSO expansion pack is not the sub required for online access. Base NSO is, so if one is paying for servers, it's just that one. Expansion pack is an extra and is only getting you access to emulators for N64, NGC, GBA, Virtual Boy etc. "If they made it a separate sub for the classic games"? That's exactly the case.
Even if it was just one bundle for both online and classic games... Why would that be okay? There is zero technical reason for classic games to be a subscription model. Being artificially tied to an unrelated one is not an excuse.