Nintendo Switch Online, the paid service for the Nintendo Switch equivalent to Sony’s PS Plus and Microsoft’s Xbox Live Gold, finally has a release date. The service, when it launches this September, will be required to access multiplayer for games, as well as offering other perks.
The early reveal promises a library of NES games with added online play. The first ten games out of twenty to be available at launch are as follows:
- Soccer
- Tennis
- Donkey Kong™
- Mario Bros.™
- Super Mario Bros.™
- Balloon Fight™
- Ice Climber™
- Dr. Mario™
- The Legend of Zelda™
- Super Mario Bros.™ 3
But new to the announcement is cloud saves. Now you can safely carry over save files across various Switch devices, something you cannot do at the moment, which meant save files are locked on that device. There has been reports where this users with faulty Switches were able to get their saves back when sent back to Nintendo for repairs, so this has been a long time coming. The specifics for how it works is yet to be detailed.
Pricing for the subscriptions starts at $3.99 USD (around RM16) for a month, $7.99 USD (RM32) for three months and $19.99 (RM80) for a year. To put in perspective, PS Plus in Malaysia is offered for RM21, RM43 and RM129 for one month, three months and a year of subscription respectively. There’s also a family plan for $34.99 (RM140) that allows eight accounts to share the subscription.
With the announcement, Nintendo Switch owners will have until September 2018 to play multiplayer games such as Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe free without subscription.