Nintendo Switch 'free' monthly games come with a huge catch

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Part of the Nintendo Switch’s forthcoming paid online service will be a “monthly game download,” an offering seemingly similar to Microsoft’s Games with Gold and Sony’s PlayStation Plus. Here’s the description of the service from Nintendo’s site:

Monthly game download

Subscribers will get to download and play a Nintendo Entertainment System™ (NES) or Super Nintendo Entertainment System™ (Super NES) game (with newly-added online play) for free for a month.

If you are familiar with how the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 offerings go, you’d be forgiven for reading that as if you had a month to add a specific game to your library and then, so long as you remain a subscriber to Nintendo’s paid online service, you have access to those “free” games. For Xbox One, the backward compatible Xbox 360 games are actually yours to own ... forever. But on Nintendo Switch, it means you have a month to play the game and then it’s no longer available, you’d need to buy it to continue playing.

Even though we don't know what this paid service will cost (maybe it's really cheap?), this is making people very upset. You can click through to read the replies to Wired’s Chris Kohler after he confirmed the news.
The point about Virtual Console games is a good one because, while the idea of digital rights and ownership of digital goods has gone from something new and challenging in the media space over the last 20 years to something more or less settled, here’s Nintendo continuing to extract maximum value from its back catalog. When players upgraded from the Wii to the Wii U, many were surprised to learn that they had to rebuy the often decades-old games they had already purchased. This is true, again, on the Nintendo 3DS systems.

While purchases made on an Xbox 360 work on an Xbox One (if the game is supported at least), and while purchases made on a Kindle or an iPhone or any number of digital media devices follow you across generations, Nintendo has historically resisted giving customers that kind of ownership.

It’s unclear how Nintendo plans to handle ownership of Wii U Virtual Console games — will you need to buy them again? — but this initiative, in addition to being a markedly lesser value than its own competition, continues Nintendo’s tradition of treating its library as a premium offering and not something to be given away.

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Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: http://www.polygon.com/2017/1/13/14266290/nintendo-switch-monthly-games-not-free

Comments

"Nintendo Switch 'free' monthly games come with a huge catch" :: Login/Create an Account :: 20 comments

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ForestPosted:

I'm not making my judgment until the subscription price is mentioned. If it's 10 dollars for the year, and you get a free game to try every month then it's not as big as an issue as people are making it out to be.

SleepPosted:

No one I know will be getting the switch.

TelePosted:

They need to make money somewhere.

MaggardoPosted:

That just ruins it, their competitors, Sony and Microsoft, have a way better system then the Nintendo Switch will have. Sony gives out free games, and you just add them to your library and can keep them as long as you pay your subscription fee, which isn't as good as Microsoft's games for gold program. You get free games every month, and whenever you add them to your library, you get to keep them forever. Even after your subscription expires, which is awesome.

If Nintendo is going to give out games every month, you might as well just call them free trials. But if they give out games every month, their subscription fee better not be very high. Even if I do have a Nintendo Switch, I most likely won't have a subscription, as far as I know, none of my friends are getting the Switch when it comes out. So I won't need the subscription to play with my buddies, I'd possibly consider it, if they gave the games out every month, and you got to actually keep them. A lot of my buddies already have either a PS4 or Xbox One, so I don't know if any of them would go out and buy a Nintendo Switch. Me, personally, I am interested in purchasing one. But I don't know if any of my friends will be.

Anyways, Microsoft's games for gold feature, is better than both Sony's free monthly games feature, and is already WAAAAAAY better than Nintendo's free monthly games.

SakuPosted:

Well that really not inserting anymore

BondsPosted:

I like that they are providing this but I wouldn't pay for the online service.

VHzPosted:

Thats a pile of crap in my opinion

MickersPosted:

The hell would anyone want to own a game for a month and then have to buy it? Ew.

ReevyPosted:

was never interested and I am glad I wasn't

NickPosted:

The more and more I hear about this console, the less interested I become in it.