I’ve found it easy over the years to rag on Nintendo for the stunning lack of quality of its online services. Nintendo just struggles when it comes to internet functionality, and they’re certainly still lagging behind their competitors even now. Still though, they’ve made progress, and that should be noted too. I don’t know if Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack (ugh) is really worth the $50 annual charge, but at least it’s closer now than it was at launch. That’s at least something.

The above trailer is the announcement trailer for the so-called “expansion pack” for Nintendo Switch Online (NSO). It holds the distinction of being one of the most downvoted videos in YouTube history, and that’s primarily because Nintendo decided to set the price for the package at $50 annually.

Before the “expansion pack” was released, NSO was priced at $20 and it included everything the service had to offer. Now though, users would have to fork out more than twice that if they wanted to enjoy the new stuff Nintendo was adding, which at the time amounted to a handful of N64 and Sega games. Many people, myself included, rightfully thought of this as a major rip-off.

It’s been over a year since this trailer and the launch of the “expansion pack” for NSO, and while Nintendo still hasn’t delivered everything that’s been promised for the service (seriously, where’s Mario Party 3?!), it has at least added a lot of content.

Both Game Boy and Game Boy Advance have been added as sections, and many of their greatest hits are already up and available to play. More games have been put in the N64, Sega Genesis, NES and Super Nintendo portions as well. There are a lot of great classic games available at users’ fingertips right now, and it’s fantastic! I’ve gotten great use of the N64 emulator in particular.

The thing is though, this still amounts to very little in comparison to what Sony and Microsoft are offering on their services for not that much more money. There are as many “free” games (in Sony’s case), but what is there is mostly stuff from the most recent console generations. It’s modern stuff that’s often a lot more desirable to play.

While I LOVE N64 and SNES stuff, there’s no getting around the fact that those games are almost 30 years old now. I’ve played them many times. I want to play stuff I can’t get my hands on as easily. Where’s the GameCube stuff? Where are the Wii, DS, and 3DS games? Where’s the stuff from this century Nintendo? Seriously?

For real, if any of those categories were in included in Nintendo Switch Online, it’d be so much easier to justify paying for it. I’m enjoying what that’s there for sure, but NSO is never going to be anything more than “alright” until more modern stuff is included (and the networking is more stable). Hopefully we’ll more once Nintendo’s next system finally hits the market some time next year.

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How do you feel about Nintendo Switch Online? What do you think needs to be added?

Image source: myvideogamenews.com