Nintendo insider Emily Rogers has commented on today’s pricing announcement for Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pass. The Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, which was fully unveiled today, costs $49.99 / £35.99 per year for individuals and $79.99 / £59.99 for the family plan and includes HD NES, HD SNES, HD Nintendo 64 and HD SEGA Mega Drive games along with the new downloadable content pack for Animal Crossing: New Horizons titled Happy Home Paradise. Emily said on Twitter that she had heard that licensing costs could be behind the higher than expected price of Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pass. She had heard that SEGA had benefitted quite nicely from the deal with Nintendo and presumably other third party game developers such as Konami and Capcom. The Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack launches on 25th /26th October and Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Happy Home Paradise launches 5th November.
Emily Rogers: “Licensing costs are likely main culprit behind NSO expansion’s bold price”
Pass
What about SSBU? They likely had to go through hard negotiations to get at least half of those fighters, yet, it was just $5 for a newly created character, stage and many of them included newly remixed songs and whether it was a Nintendo character like Byleth or Min Min or if it was a character likely much harder to get like Steve or especially Sora, the price never increased from that (unless if you got each character separate and that would make it $6 a character). My point is that if Nintendo can negotiate for characters to be in smash in a modern game where they beat up each other (which may look bad on certain characters in certain circumstances), then it shouldn’t spike up the price this much to add old Sega games and the original Banjo and Kazooie game into the Nintendo Switch online library just because of negotiations. Plus, a short time after their console rivalry came to an end, it seems like Nintendo and Sega have been on good terms, so I doubt Sega would charge that much for their games to be a part of Nintendo Switch Online, especially since the games are so old. Case in point: greed is the root of the problem and I encourage people to use an emulator for these games instead of paying for this to prove a point, once they actually get the point and lower the price, then I might encourage people to use this.
Shut up
I’m not big on the Genesis being on NSO in the first place… So, if that’s why it’s so expensive, that’s a bonehead move on Nintendo’s part.
All of you are stupid, do the math, out of the 50 Nick’s you get. Regular online is 20 bucks, the animal crossing dlc. Is 25 bucks and the N64 and sega games are only 5:bucks. Emily rogers is a moron, 5 bucks is nothing. Use your brains idiots.
Nope. Not worth it for me. But it will have takers, esp youtubers who do these retro gaming lets plays etc.
If it’s licensing that was driving up the cost, why didn’t the price point for just NES and SNES games reflect that in the initial membership package? There are some games in those libraries that I’m sure took some negotiating to get added on.
I mean, the original package was also expensive for what it was.
The original membership was $0.06 per day. How is 6 cents expensive to anyone? Most of the people complaining that it’s too expensive would rather illegally download the roms for free. Seriously people, where else are you going to play N64 games against others online and for only 14 cents a day?
So let me get this service straight;
Garbage Online Service
Garbage Subscription Benefits
Garabge & Incomplete Selection of NES/SNES Games
All the above for what $24.99? (I don’t remeber the price)
Garbage “Expansion Pass” that isn’t expanding anything
Garbage & Incomplete Selection of N64/Sega Genesis Games
We’re paying now in addition to the original online service, $100 a year
We’re really paying this much for old games in 2021??
We all know full well they’re either going to skip Gameboy and Gamecube games or they’re going to add them in another expansion pass as another incomplete selection.
Every employee of Playstation and Xbox must be having a field day laughing at this pathetic excuse of a service. I mean wow, this is exactly what I’m talking about with companies making such terrible decisions. Why is it so damn hard for these companies to make actually good decisions when it’s not even rocket science? I really want to visit the Nintendo execs in a meeting, slap them all in the face and ask them “wtf is wrong with you people”?
I’m not going to argue that the expansion pass is worthwhile, but this is a very poor analysis.
Even at $100 a year, it is still competitive pricing with Sony and Microsoft’s offerings, who typically offer completely valueless games that are neither new, but also not timeless classics like much of Nintendo’s offerings. I’ve been a PS+ subscriber for years, and on average there’s maybe, MAYBE one or two games a year of even slight interest. If it weren’t for the fact that I still own most of the original cartridges, Nintendo’s offerings would be better, objectively, on a cost basis for what I would actually play. As for the online service’s functionality, no, it is definitely not great, but neither are Sony and Microsoft’s.
“We’re really paying this much for old games in 2021??”
Uhh Yes. Yes you are. Prices go up over time, not down, and the age of a product has little to do with its value. There’s a misconception amongst gamers that age determines price because generally speaking all games drop in price after release but this isn’t because the magic wand of age lowered the price. Its because the market realized the game was never worth $60 in the first place.
“Why is it so damn hard for these companies to make actually good decisions when it’s not even rocket science?”
Because they have to deal with reality, while you have to deal with your imagination. We’re currently looking at inflation rates not seen in our lifetime. $50 today will not be worth $50 by the time your membership comes up for renewal. Their costs to operate as a business are going up every single month, but they can’t exactly raise their prices every single month can they? Both Sony and Microsoft are multi-industry companies, who can allow one division’s success cover the failures in another through the ebb and flow of the market. Nintendo has no such advantage. As such, they will always, always, be less able to cut a steep discount like the competition does when they deliberately underprice a product, selling at a loss, in order to gain customers. That may not be a “fun” answer, but its real life. Nintendo doesn’t sell TV’s or operating systems or phones or make movies. They have to make all of their money on games. Their gaming division has to be profitable every. single. quarter.
The membership is priced accordingly with market trends such that they’re not going to have to come and ask you for more money later, because nobody accepts price hikes very well. Does that mean it isn’t worth it? Maybe, and if so time will tell in the numbers.
Uh, I’m pretty sure it’s $50 (for a single person) for a year for the expansion pack, and that comes with the original online service. It’s not the price of the original, plus $50 for N64 and Mega Drive
They already fulfilled their promise of better online. But its only goin to work on games still in the middle of development or finishing soon. MHRise was the 1st game to use the brand new netcode and servers Nintendo put out. It’s honestly fantastic but its not gonna retrofit onto older games b4 Rise or came out right around Rise’s release, sadly. Mostly due to having to go engine deep in changing the code to work on the new netcode. Which is gonna require more than a simple patch to change.
That is not a satisfying answer.
Yea most of these are first party games. If the rights are making it higher price, ok fine, then lets see the games. Goldeneye, NFL blitz, wayne gretzgy. I’ll pay up if you’re out there actually getting some cool property rights. Not sure how much they had to pay for Kirby, although that game is fun and would like to play again.
The expansion pass is still cheaper than the standard $20 if you find people who are smart enough to go under the same family plan and split the costs… but $80 for just N64 and Genesis? Really?
This is some strange excuse coming from her. Not saying she is not very smart but 80$ for those games seems like a bit of a rip off.
I’m assuming she’s also including future N64 releases on NSO under that statement, as we already know licensed third party games are coming and some of them will have been tricky to obtain (Konami, Rare, Capcom, etc.) But yeah, still pretty steep for 20+ year old games
It’s utterly ridiculous. The standards prices would MAYBE be worth it if we had more consoles and a few of the handhelds on here with monthly additions instead of the pathetically slow trickles we see once every quarter. Maybe they’ll give us more free DLC down the line to balance out the cost but I won’t hold my breath.
Im quite certain that the subscription is the OG online subscription + expansion pack for 50. Not 80. In fact, it is called “Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pass”.
It’s $80 for the family plan, but each individual member only has to pay $10 if they evenly split it. It’s a good deal that most people don’t even consider doing.
Weird cuz the Sega games don’t seem like much of a selling point to me lol
I can’t wait tbh. 😍😍😍 Playing Nintendo 64 games online with my friends 😍😍😍
Hell to the no…….I lovee Banjo-Kazooie but I’m not bout to fork over $50.00 for this expansion for one game.
I wouldnt even do that for Pikmin.
I’ll just have to find my Wii and Wii U to play N64 games again. N64 doesnt even have that many games to begin with.
Even with the new information that came in, I’ll just wait until this years subscription expires. (September)
I’d rather buy the old working copies of these N64 games and use my N64.
That’s way to much money for this service.
50$ is okay considering it will include a massive expansion for animal crossing. It’s the second year where it’s gets tricky so I won’t auto renew unless I know how solid the retro line-up is going to be in year 2.
I’d probably wait and see if they add another DLC to the expansion next year if you’re using it as the main selling point. If they’re not going to add any further DLC, or the future ones offered will be for games that you don’t care about, then it’s probably better to buy the AC DLC instead of the expansion.
I see a lot of people complaining about the price being too high etc etc. but honestly I’ll be getting it. It’s worth the price especially since they will have not only the Nintendo 64 but also sega games. People exspect things to be cheap, honestly it’s only 50.00 a year it could be worse. They complain about prices but yet pay for a game on their other consoles that cost about 50 to 60 dollars or more.
Grant it, u can get a pretty sizeable collection of Sega Genesis games for a price on the eShop.
Way more is offered compared to wht the emu will give.
So the value of it already drops.
People been buying these games over the years and owning them on other system iterations.
Now instead of owning you have the “right” to use them.
You’re renting games that you literally can own on Wii U for much less money.
And yeah you won’t be able to play online or whatever.
Still not worth it imo.
Owning > Sub fees, everyday of the week.
And those 50-60$ games you’re speaking off generally are finished major A titles to some degree with major polish, these are games from years ago. That’s not comparable really.
I wuldnt count it as “owning” once the online shops go down. Then ur at the mercy of keeping ur systems maintainence and care up.
80 bucks a year? I can live with that. I’ve made sure any annual payments I have come at different months so I don’t end up broke because I got them all coming in the same month. My wallet would die if I paid for my PS+, NSO, & property taxes all in the same month along with my monthly payments.
I would gladly pay 60 bucks for a N64 collection, single time payment. But I am not that into annual subscriptions.