On Friday, October 15th, 2021, Nintendo ended their Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct with the unthinkable: a $49.99 price tag for the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack 12 month individual membership. They also announced an $79.99 price tag for 12 month family memberships which can be shared with up to eight people. The $19.99 12 month individual and $34.99 12 month family memberships without the expansion pack will still be available for purchase. The Expansion Pack includes a selection of N64 and Sega Genesis games with the same additional features found in the NES and SNES apps already available with the base Nintendo Switch Online subscription. It was announced that the Happy Home Paradise DLC for Animal Crossing: New Horizons would be included as well during the direct.
Is it worth it?
Of course the most popular argument online would be the most pointless and subjective one. Whether or not something is “worth it” is obviously based relatively, but there isn’t anything to compare to in this case.
Some people will say Xbox Live Gold or PlayStation Plus, but those are not only more expensive, but also completely different. Anyone who wants to play most games online on Xbox or PlayStation has to pay $59.99 dollars a year minimum with these subscriptions, and if they do so they can claim 3-4 (depending on the service) games monthly and keep them as long as their subscription lasts (or in the case of Xbox 360 games forever). These services also provide exclusive online store discounts and free game trials for their members to a greater extent than the base Nintendo Switch Online membership does. PlayStation Plus also comes with 20 popular PS4 games if you have a PS5. You also get cloud saves from PlayStation Plus, which are free on Xbox. Xbox and PlayStation both have significantly more in-depth online systems with stuff like party chat and clans that are actually on the console.
Meanwhile, on Nintendo’s side you are required to pay either $19.99 (or $34.99 split with up to 8 people) a year to play most games online. If you do so you get the library of 124 SNES and NES games (counting the US releases only) with emulator features including netplay. You also get PAC-MAN 99 and Tetris 99 and exclusive access to buying the wireless retro controllers for Switch from Nintendo directly. Nintendo also gives you free game trials sometimes and cloud saves for most games. There were some other deals and small DLC rewards in the past but they are gone now or hardly worth mentioning at this point. The Switch has basically zero online features even if you pay for this, with almost everything coming down to what came you are playing and often requiring you to use the phone app to do anything.
As you can see, the base versions of the most popular gaming subscriptions compared to Nintendo’s base subscriptions are hardly similar. Paying extra for more games (which are often a lot better than what Xbox and PlayStation will be giving you) doesn’t suddenly make them comparable services. This leads to the conclusion:
There isn’t actually anything like this.
The closest comparison is a much less fully featured and cheaper version of Xbox Game Pass but with old games. Even though they are old some of these games are definitely better than every single game on Xbox Game Pass (as of now). Maybe you have already played these games, but you definitely have not played them with this official emulator on Switch that isn’t even released to the public yet. The same could have been said of Xbox Game Pass when it came out, but that didn’t stop people from buying it when it first came out. Probably because it was optional and separate from Xbox Live Gold, which is the case here too.
As a side note:
Do you really want online features on Nintendo Switch?
One of the biggest complaints about the Switch is the poor performance. Ignoring whether or not this is a really valid complaint, adding online features to the Switch is just going to make this worse, and probably significantly. The Switch wasn’t made with this in mind and adding a bunch of features that weren’t planned for is definitely not going to help performance. The lack of lag in the main menu is one of the best things about the Switch, and sacrificing that to add social features that are inferior to just using Discord doesn’t seem worth it. Maybe you are thinking “the Vita had it so why can’t the Switch”. First of all, copying a failed console isn’t really a good idea. Besides that though, if you have seen how the Vita runs games and you think the Switch should be closer to that I would be shocked.
Maybe you think these are somehow comparable anyway, and Nintendo is scamming you. If so, maybe you should consider how:
The family plan is extremely cheap.
If you use the family plan it becomes so cheap its barely even worth the time to debate about if you should buy it or not. If you split it with others, you will get getting anywhere from a $10 dollar to $40 dollar discount compared to the $49.99 solo membership price (with the Expansion Pack included). You can even get special bundles that will include the family membership with usually an SD card if that isn’t good enough for you. Spread over a year this is pretty much an insignificant amount of money to anybody who has time to read this blog, and you are actually getting a good service. In fact it is actually one of the best deals in gaming, even better than Xbox Game Pass, which often gets called that.
Let’s say that somehow still is not worth it to you. You still have yet to consider:
This plan is brand new.
Saying that a 12 month plan that hasn’t even released yet isn’t worth it really doesn’t make sense. Nintendo already promised more N64 games, and we recently got the announcement of the Animal Crossing DLC being included. It would be extremely surprising if Nintendo doesn’t include some more unannounced stuff during the 12 months you have the plan if you buy it when it comes out. Literally nothing is holding you back from waiting though, so you can do that if you are really concerned.
In conclusion: don’t be angry at Nintendo for no reason, and take advantage of the extremely good deal that you get with a family plan and enjoy some N64 games, Sega Genesis games, and Animal Crossing DLC on Nintendo Switch.
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