So, about that Switch Online Expansion Pack

Nintendo has unveiled details on their new Switch Online “Expansion Pack” this week, and its not sitting well with fans of the House of Mario.

The upgraded online subscription contains all the same features of the vanilla experience. However, those who choose to pay a little extra will get access to a select collection of Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64 titles. They will also get free access to Happy Home Paradise, the new DLC for Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Which seems like a decent deal, until you actually look at what they’re charging for this upgrade.

The Expansion Pack is only available as an annual subscription, which will retail for $63.99 CAD. That’s 2.5 times more expensive than the base service. The price for family plans have also seen a significant increase, again more than doubling to $99.99 per year.

Now, it is worth noting that the Expansion Pack is completely optional. The base service will continue to remain available at its current price. NES and SNES games will also continue to be available to those on the cheaper tier. Though many Nintendo faithful are really questioning the value of this new service. Nintendo is only offering nine N64 games and 13 Genesis titles to start, with the promise of more coming later. Though many have already taken issue at the slow rate in which new NES and SNES games have been added to the service. All these titles are also well over 20 years old at this point, and many popular games have been left off the list. The company is also selling replica Genesis and N64 controllers to be used with the service, at a rather steep $65 CAD a pop. As a side note, this is nearly as expensive as the Genesis Mini, which comes with two official replica controllers.

Switch Online has always been a bit controversial. The service was initially free, then went to a paid model back in 2018, bringing it into line with the two other consoles. However, the quality has never exactly been there. Many games still use peer-to-peer connectivity rather than dedicated servers, along with the host of problems that includes. It also still lacks numerous features that Xbox Live and PlayStation Network have featured for over a decade now. Lack of voice chat being perhaps the most notable, with many gamers opting to use Discord instead of Nintendo’s janky phone app. On top of that, the service paywalled save backups, and download speeds still leave a lot to be desired.

Despite this, Nintendo got a bit of a pass on this because Switch Online was so cheap. At just $24.99 CAD per year. it is significantly less than what Microsoft and Sony charge annually for their services. But the Expansion Pack puts that price a lot closer to the big boys, with seemingly no improvements to existing features. So what exactly are users paying for? Many of those Genesis games have been available on various compellations for years. Once that can be bought, on Switch no less, for less money than an annual sub. Leaving N64 as the real star of the show. But is that really worth an extra $30 per year for a handful of games being drip fed to you? See Nintendo, this is why piracy exists. Now, the Animal Crossing DLC is a nice bonus. But not everyone has that game. So if you don’t that really starts making this a pretty piss poor value proposition.

Now, there are questions about regarding future plans for the Expansion Pack. If it becomes a service for free DLC, a la Animal Crossing, then that might actually make it worth the admission price. But as things are right now, a bunch of decades old ROMs from only two systems doesn’t make it worth it.