Nintendo Switch Online is launching this month, and the news is both good and bad. Much in the way PlayStation and Xbox users are accustomed to, Nintendo Switch Online asks users to pay a subscription fee to play games online, access selected NES games and more.
There are four pricing plans available, three for individuals and one family membership. For individuals, 1 month will set you back $5.95 AUD, 3 months $11.95 or 12 months 29.95. A 12-month family membership will cost $54.95, granting family membership to up to an additional 7 linked Nintendo Account holders.
Of course, the service will allow Switch owners to play online, in games including Splatoon 2, ARMS and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. It integrates with the Nintendo Switch Online app, allowing you to view your friend list and manage game invitations.
Classic NES games will be playable with added online play for paying subscribers, with 20 games available at launch. The titles initially available include:
- Soccer
- Tennis
- Donkey Kong
- Mario Bros.
- Super Mario Bros.
- Balloon Fight
- Ice Climber
- Dr. Mario
- The Legend of Zelda
- Super Mario Bros. 3
Subscribers will be able to save their games to the cloud, backing up your save data online for access through your account. This is welcome news to Switch owners, who have campaigned for cloud saves since the console launched in March last year. Previously, if a Switch were to go down, it would take all your precious saves with it.
Whilst this may appear as good news (and it is), not every game will support the functionality. Dark Souls: Remastered, FIFA 19, Pokemon: Let’s Go and Splatoon 2 have so far been identified in a Resetera post as games that do not support cloud saves. Over on Reddit, a user-created script is attempting to keep an updated list of games supporting the feature.
In a statement to Forbes, Nintendo explained why not every game would support the much asked for functionality.
“The vast majority of Nintendo Switch games will support Save Data Cloud backup. However, in certain games this feature would make it possible to, for example, regain items that had been traded to other players, or revert to a higher online multiplayer ranking that had been lost. To ensure fair play, Save Data Cloud backup may not be enabled for such games. To ensure that Save Data Cloud backups cannot be used to unfairly affect online multiplayer rankings, the feature will not be enabled in Splatoon 2.”
Obviously, this will be disappointing to many Switch owners. Hopefully, alternative means of preventing players from exploiting save data transfers can be found so that cloud saves are enabled for these games.
