Nintendo must restore the virtual console on Switch 2

Nintendo is currently the only console producer that makes you pay for a monthly subscription to your classic games, instead of letting you buy them a la carte. It must Change using switch 2.

Switch online It was a completely good idea when he arrived in 2018. PlayStation and Xbox loads for online multiplayer, so why not Nintendo? Well, there is no native voice chat for one, but hey, Nintendo will be Nintendo. To sweeten the pot, the company threw access to the growing library of classic NES games. For anyone who has not yet bought a classic NES two years earlier, it was a nice trip down memory for just USD 20 a year.

But since then it has been growing, just like the price. Switch online added SNES in 2019, and then Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis in 2021, which merged in a separate expansion package, which increased the total annual price to 50 USD. Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance are the latest, which will join this multi -level library, which currently covers over 200 games in three generations of consoles and portable.

He feels somewhat absurd that the only way (legally) access to these games in 2025 is effective renting them for an annual fee. What began as a newly welcome new, developing a wider, indestructible enthusiasm for Switch in the early years, became a bit riding. I have passed a long time that I want a giant Retro game buffet to look through my free time from time to time. I know what I want to play and what I will come back to. Why I will spend 50 USD to show The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time To my child for the first time? It wasn’t always like that.

Nintendo often lagged behind their competitors when it comes to online functions and digital markets, but in fact for the first time he allowed players to pay for downloading and playing old games on modern consoles. Wii launched in 2006 with a virtual console, offering old NES games for sale digitally, including Donkey KongIN Mario Bros.AND Legend of Zelda. I still remember, during the first semester, a house from College, falling into my debit card Military madness And experiencing the amazing science fiction soundtrack and the lunar war for the first time in a decade.

Virtual console standard He was reflected in PS1 Classics, first on PSP, and then on PlayStation 3, as well as Xbox “Originals”, which came to XBLA at the end of 2007. It was an ideal model with one glaring disadvantage for Nintendo equipment: your purchase history did not wear a purchase history from the console console. The virtual console on Wii was different than the 3DS one, which was different than the one on Wii U. Players had to buy the same nintendo games.

This frustration potentially paved the way for some initial positivity related to the launch of the online switch. Finally a single, permanent library. Never again buying Excitebike For the fourth time. Instead, it turns out that the switch would be the perfect time to hold Making a virtual console. Nintendo has already confirmed reverse compatibility for switch 2. All these copies StartropicsIN Mario Map 64AND Wonder Boy in Monster Land He would actually wear at that time.

Instead, Nintendo plays the role of the last online hit, ivting me for 4 USD every time I want to visit the original again Ninja Gaiden Games, but without the option simply to buy it, never returning it, because it was lost under my car seat. Game Pass could destroy the proposal of buying things on Xbox, but at least it still allows. Nintendo was once at the head of the digital protection of games on the console. Now we have a switch online, which seems to be a relic from a worse, more stubborn era in the company.

If Nintendo does not restore the virtual console for Switch 2, this time it may be more frustrating. We can look at the annual Wavebird package worth 100 USD, which adds great Gamecube games, which otherwise will never be converted or moved, like Mario Kart: Double Dash AND Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader. And I will pay because I am a fanboy ruled by nostalgia and chump. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Other publishers, including Capcom and Konami, have shown that you can sell great anthologies of old switch games. Some even work with companies such as Digital Eclipse to add all kinds of additional bells and whistles, such as automatic game options and extensive archives in the game of everything, from scans of original brochures to notes and sketches of programmers. Others have released HD collections such as Square Enix’s Mana AND Final Fantasy modes.

“Existence [Switch Online] does not exclude nintendo selling These games no more than the existence of Netflix deny the Blu-ray idea ” My city Editor Chris Kohler (who now works at Digital Eclipse) He wrote back in 2018. But he also took into account the reservation that “Nintendo often refuses to do things that he should of course.” Hence, when it staples N64 Goldeneye 007 It was released in 2023It was added as a free update to an independent rare collection for people on Xbox, but it was exclusive to the subscription service in Switch. We will find out if Nintendo has evolved at all Switch 2 is coming this year.

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