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Nintendo Switch Online Service Will Launch With 20 NES Games, Cloud Saves, More (polygon.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Polygon: Nintendo's online service for the Switch will include access to a selection of classic video games from the NES era as part of the subscription service. Today, Nintendo announced some of the games that will be included as part of the Nintendo Switch Online classic games selection. The 10 NES titles confirmed for the service, which Nintendo refers to as "Nintendo Entertainment System -- Nintendo Switch Online" in a press release, are: Soccer, Tennis, Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., Balloon Fight, Ice Climber, Dr. Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Super Mario Bros. 3. Nintendo promises 20 NES games will be available when Nintendo Switch Online goes live in September, meaning 10 classic NES games are still to be announced. New games for the service will be added regularly, Nintendo says.
Those NES games will include some sort of online play as part of Nintendo Switch Online. That includes online competitive or cooperative multiplayer, or simply taking turns controlling the game. "Friends can even watch each other play single-player games online, and 'pass the controller' at any time," Nintendo said in a release. "Every classic NES game will support voice chat via the Nintendo Switch Online smartphone app. It will also be possible to play these games offline." Some other details of the service, as reported by Nintendo Life, include the option for cloud save data backups and a four tiered pricing plan. In the U.S., the pricing is as follows: one month is $3.99; three months is $7.99; twelve months is $19.99; twelve month family membership is $34.99 (with up to eight Nintendo accounts on different systems that will be able to use the service).
Those NES games will include some sort of online play as part of Nintendo Switch Online. That includes online competitive or cooperative multiplayer, or simply taking turns controlling the game. "Friends can even watch each other play single-player games online, and 'pass the controller' at any time," Nintendo said in a release. "Every classic NES game will support voice chat via the Nintendo Switch Online smartphone app. It will also be possible to play these games offline." Some other details of the service, as reported by Nintendo Life, include the option for cloud save data backups and a four tiered pricing plan. In the U.S., the pricing is as follows: one month is $3.99; three months is $7.99; twelve months is $19.99; twelve month family membership is $34.99 (with up to eight Nintendo accounts on different systems that will be able to use the service).
A zero-configuartation-neded multi-platform NES software emulator with resolution upconversion plus say the Top 40 NES ROMs from that era, with a 19.95 option to get 2 original feeling plastic NES gamepads that plug together into 1 USB port, making the whole thing an 80 Dollar outing. That would have been a very cool option for many who want to relive their childhood/youth every now and then. Far better than credit card + online registration + cloud service use + keeping track of monthly payments and so forth. The only good thing about the service they are proposing that I can see is it isn't too expensive. Still, gamers from that era intensely dislike the cloud. Where you could bring in the cloud would be that this emulator has an online store where you can get additional NES ROMs at whatever price using your credit card.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
I'm honestly surprised they're offering cloud saves as the solution, seeing how some game saves in some games can exceed 5GB per save file. That's a pretty extreme cloud storage solution for $20/yr.
But while cloud saves address some issues, they introduce others. Aside from the financial barrier making this critical feature only available to those willing to pay ever year, but how does this address corrupted save files? At the OS level, the cloud backup service isn't going to have a way to check the integrity of each savegame and know if a game crash corrupted the file making it unusable before obediently backing it up to the "cloud" and overwriting your only other intact save file for that game. Will they provide versioning, further adding to their storage burden?
So many issues that would've been solved by proper SD card backups, where you could keep an archive of known-good files and revert to older versions if necessary.
You mean like the SNES Classic including previously never officially released Star Fox 2?
I've not checked but I believe all of these are first party games meaning they've got the licensing matters settled. Licensing other companies' games might prove hard, expensive or even impossible