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It's 2021 why is Nintendo's online experience so terrible.

jakinov

Member
Developers and publishers take care of all that crap(or should)...all I care about is playing the videogame...I don't even care if a developer uses P2P to save money. I have the client...I want to connect directly to a player, or to the publisher's server. Who the fuck is nintendo?


Years ago...MS stepped in-between hardware and software to STOP packets. They utilized contract law to wedge themselves between customers and developers. All the console manufacturers have been pretending they offer some service ever since, when it's really just a giant cockblock. Online plans are the opposite of service, they are REMOVING SERVICE if you refuse to pay.


Maybe it was just more obvious watching it happen in real time, when MS effectively imposed Live on the whole console industry. There was no fucking plan to play PSO on gamecube. Nintendo saw Xbox fans take it up the butt and joined the party.
They don’t do that but they would if it wasn’t available. The platform doing it offers a unified/cohesive convent experience. You register once sign on using a single ID. You have one friends list. One profile system. One place to report problems or to report users. One inbox etc. It’s also better for a lot of developers who get to rely on common services existing and they just need make sure their games can interact with them.

I don’t know what Microsoft did or didn’t do in the past but these consoles aren’t blocking internet access today. The consoles are walled gardens with very specific requirements for what is allowed to be released. One of those requirements is that anything multiplayer has to be integrated with a system that has a pay wall for users.

Sony and Nintendo do it because they don’t want to lose money on a division if they can avoid it. They saw that people were willing to pay a tiny bit of money a month so they did it too. Again It cost money to provide these service and nobody wants to use their traditional revenue stream’s profits to compensate for the “new” costs; especially if it’s proven they can avoid it.
 

nerdface

Banned
$3 a month for an avatar and a gamertag. Sign me up!


someone tell valve they're gonna go under maintaining friends lists for everyone without a subscription to pay for it
 
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Cutty Flam

Banned
It’s really an abysmal experience, if you compare it to Xbox live. As to why they haven’t done anything to improve it, I think Nintendo refuses to introduce hardcore gaming elements online that could hamper the experience of their games. Online gets highly competitive and the experience can bring a lot of frustration, rage, negative feelings that go with experiencing a game online. But that can and does happen even with their minimal approach to Online now; even despite their efforts to keep Online clean it can and will continue to happen. Because that’s how it goes when you compete with others, losing/winning will always bring with it an experience that forces the player to feel something. Nintendo tries to avoid that I’m pretty sure, for their younger audience. Most teens and adults probably would go berserk if Nintendo had comparable online to their competition

Imagine how fun it would be to play all your favorite Nintendo games co-op or multiplayer online. Nintendo should plan something but they already make so much without great online. All they have to do is create more powerful hardware and a much better online experience and they can dominate like no other. I myself have always wondered the same thing OP
 

bender

What time is it?
Tetris 99 works great. Outlanders is one of the most miserable online experiences I've had since the PS2 era.
 

jakinov

Member
$3 a month for an avatar and a gamertag. Sign me up!


someone tell valve they're gonna go under maintaining friends lists for everyone without a subscription to pay for it
Nobody said anything about going under. Plus I already explained about Steam is more lucrative as they make more money per game sold and they don’t have the same costs. They provide a glorified browser with chat for their app and cheapen out on other areas like customer support.

Again nobody wants to eat the costs of millions of dollars if they can avoid. Steam has to eat the costs and their business model from the get go has been lucrative up front so they don’t care. Sony and Nintendo on the other hand, would traditionally spend millions developing a console that they sold you close to costs in hopes for royalty money to compensate for the consoles. No software updates and no services to run and manage. Now they have to pay engineers, IT personnel (security, networking, systems, database), managers, moderators, support, etc. The engineers alone who develop these services aren’t cheap, especially in the US where both services are developed. Software engineers working for Microsoft for example with almost no experience make over six figures and grow to make multiple hundreds of thousands in total compensation.
 
People buy Nintendo just for Nintendo games, the rest they don't give a shit.

Me? I bought one, I like the games, but it feels like I'm stuck in 2001 when using it. Ridiculous how a company that size doesn't keep up with the times.
 

Dream-Knife

Banned
I really quit caring about this once I got a PS4, and then later a PC. If Switch is your only console the experience is very lacking, but as a supplementary console (which Nintendo has been for 20 years now) it's fine.

Paying money for it is a rip off though. They can keep their ROMs and I'll keep my $20.
 

MagnesG

Banned
It's not that terrible. Mario Kart 8D is so so, at least most of the time. Tetris and Pacman 99 works great. MH Rise is the best, better online experience than World.

And that's all most people care about.
 
They have no incentive to invest in it. Just as they have no incentive to invest in 4k (or even 1080p), etc etc. Why would they? They're not just doing fine without it, they're doing amazing.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
Not only most of the games are SP-based, but they also have no competition on the handheld market, so neither Nintendo nor their customers care.


Online is overrated. The worst experiences in gaming are multiplayer

Git gud and you'll start enjoying it.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Sony and Microsoft got apps that you can download games directly to your consoles and is a way smoother experience in terms of online integration. With all the consoles Nintendo is selling and how long they have been around for there should be no way they are dropping the ball on this in 2021.

It's still not even up to par when online was free on the PS3.
I think B Bodomism should be able to answer this while looking at their ratio between revenues and profit margins ;).
 
Nintendo still designs its games with couch multiplayer mindset. And being Japanese is all about culture, they put their culture above all. I admire that.
Sony (Playstation division) is a Japanese company with western mindset.
If you want games with the latest graphics technology on home console & superior online infrastructure, buy a PlayStation or Xbox.
If you want Nintendo games, then buy a Switch. no need to be a fanboy.
 

nerdface

Banned
Nobody said anything about going under. Plus I already explained about Steam is more lucrative as they make more money per game sold and they don’t have the same costs. They provide a glorified browser with chat for their app and cheapen out on other areas like customer support.

Again nobody wants to eat the costs of millions of dollars if they can avoid. Steam has to eat the costs and their business model from the get go has been lucrative up front so they don’t care. Sony and Nintendo on the other hand, would traditionally spend millions developing a console that they sold you close to costs in hopes for royalty money to compensate for the consoles. No software updates and no services to run and manage. Now they have to pay engineers, IT personnel (security, networking, systems, database), managers, moderators, support, etc. The engineers alone who develop these services aren’t cheap, especially in the US where both services are developed. Software engineers working for Microsoft for example with almost no experience make over six figures and grow to make multiple hundreds of thousands in total compensation.

That’s a whole lot of words, and you didn’t even pick good ones.

Your argument is, console companies aren’t as profitable as Steam (lol), so they just can’t afford not to rip us off... because ‘console’ silicone somehow creates magically higher overhead than the PC space.

That’s retarded.
 

BlackTron

Member
Nintendo tried to broaden their online horizons on the Wii U. What they got was a failed console and ten thousand dick drawings.

They want to offload that liability. They don't want anyone to see that because they bought a Nintendo. Only by having a cell phone, which opens you up to the entire Internet anyway, can you join in.
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
It honestly sucks, I have my own house so my PC is set up in my home office and my Big ass TV I play my switch on is downstairs at the oposite side of the house.

So to play monster hunter rise with my friends I had to effectively use a Bluetooth extender to link my Sony wh-1000xm4 to my PC (which thankfully had a motherboard that supports bluetooth) just to he able to get into discord and communicate with them.

Come on Nintendo please just give up already and add chat rooms to the switch we can go into with friends and chat... or hell just have it supported ingame with a headset.

I did try using my phone but the discord app mutes me after 30 minutes until I rsync the headset and I can't find a way to stop it doing that.
 
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AJUMP23

Member
Did you see Nintendo made it possible to invite people to play Mario Party with you. Thus ensuring you will never have friends again.
 

Shubh_C63

Member
Can you imagine what Nintendo could do if they can learn to Google instead of still using AskJeeves.
 
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WakeTheWolf

Member
Not only most of the games are SP-based, but they also have no competition on the handheld market, so neither Nintendo nor their customers care.




Git gud and you'll start enjoying it.
No thanks why would anyone want to play online with a bunch of morons
 

Radical_3d

Member
This question gets asked again and again for fifteen years in a row, now. And you’ll be able to make it fifteen years from now.
 

Shifty1897

Member
Nintendo isn't willing to pay a couple million dollars a year for a team of cloud engineers and an architect, and that's totally on them.
 

killatopak

Gold Member
I’m thinking Nintendo is still stuck with the it’s for the kids safety. I mean yeah there have been instances where their online services like the Mii or even drawing at Splatoon was used to put either sexualized content or political agenda.

I just think that there are better ways to fix this than outright not caring at all.
 

GloveSlap

Member
Why should they, when there’s an online army of people like you who do it all the time?

Non-Nintendo buyers: Nooo, Nintendo’s online is stuck in 2001, they can’t keep getting away with it!
Switch user: Haha Smash Online go brrrrrr.
Anyone that cares how much money "their" company makes over the playability of a game/console is the lamest kind of fanboy console warrior there is.
 

jakinov

Member
That’s a whole lot of words, and you didn’t even pick good ones.

Your argument is, console companies aren’t as profitable as Steam (lol), so they just can’t afford not to rip us off... because ‘console’ silicone somehow creates magically higher overhead than the PC space.

That’s retarded.
No my main argument is that it's not just them "blocking your internet" and that it's an expensive to manage and run a service. And that they monetize way less and have to do more than Steam does.

You started making some strawman argument about how Steam was going to "go under" if they didn't charge money. So I'm responding to why that's not the case.

And again it's not that they can't afford to "rip us off" it's that they have a justifiable reason for it i.e. it's expensive to run, people are willing to pay for it and nobody wants to take other money you were expecting to compensate for your new endeavor.

"Console silicone" does not add overhead but the nature of how you build your service/product is different. Building native applications and building out an operating system and extending it has way more overhead and requires more talent than building a barebone native application with essentially an embeded web browser that they can use web technologies to do the heavy lifting. Then you also disregard, the other things I've mentioned such as Steam cheapening out on things like support and having high royalty cuts that make things more lucrative for them. Which are business decisions and not magic.
 

nerdface

Banned
And what you don’t understand,
is that narrative, that the console space is special or different...is bullshit.

I agree with you, the unnecessary systems they create to charge you money cost money.

teach me more about that straw man, bro
 
I think it’s simple. Nintendo thinks like a toy company and wants their products to be easily accessible to casuals. They’ll appeal to hardcore gamers with a few of their titles, but that is not their main consumer. They’re not keeping up with certain aspects of gaming because they’re still using the same philosophy of making it more for the mainstream. What amazes me is that they are so terrible at mobile gaming. They could really capitalize on that market with their philosophies.
 

oagboghi2

Member
How is the experience difficult. You buy a subscription, you play your game online. So fucking what?

Anyone that cares how much money "their" company makes over the playability of a game/console is the lamest kind of fanboy console warrior there is.
Do you want to know what is lamer?

Bitching and crying over a console you don't own
 
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Mistake

Member
I usually had a decent connection on DS, 3DS/WiiU strangely. Switch is bad, but does it have more to do with the titles? I heard splatoon ran fairly well.
 

jakinov

Member
And what you don’t understand,
is that narrative, that the console space is special or different...is bullshit.

I agree with you, the unnecessary systems they create to charge you money cost money.

teach me more about that straw man, bro
It is different and I gave you a bunch of reasons on why it is. Different business models, different environment and different standards. Remember when the the PlayStation store embeded a website instead of being a native application? People complained until they made a new native one that was faster and sleeker. Remember when companies keep trying to add a bunch of different expensive DRM to PC games? Didn't work. What you think will happen if you try and take an additional 30% cut of games from developers on top of the retailers cut? You think people are going to be happy if you remove single-sign-on, moderation, invites, trophies, phone support profiles, friends, and all those other features in order to cut costs? You think all publishers are going to pick up the slack or they can compare to doing it universally across the platform. If steam removes all their versions of this, most people probably won't care because they have free reign to run any application they want and the whole PC market is already used to all that segmentation and inconvenience.

They create these systems because people expect a delightful, convenient and cohesive experience. They charge money because they don't want to lose money and people are willing to pay. You may not care about them but people definitely do. People were worried before the PS3 came out when it was reported that they won't have universal sign-on, people then complained about their lack of services that enabled experiences that helped people join games together. People were upset that Resistance 1 didn't integrate with their friends list. People complained that they had no report system to deal with bots or deter harassers. People wanted achievement systems for their profiles. They wanted cross-game-chat. They wanted voice messages. They wanted an in-game interface just so that they can use the messaging system and friends system. Again, if you take that all away, people will complain. PlayStation even had to make a dedicated site, because people kept spamming their blog with feature requests.
 
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supernova8

Banned
Same reason they keep selling the same old retro games again and again, because customers will lap it up anyway

More seriously, I had a Switch back when proper Nintendo Online wasn't a thing and I actually kinda enjoyed it. It was nice to just have a console with a barebones online infrastructure that has stuff like demos to download, and just focus on the games. It's actually better than the sensory and information overload that is the Playstation Network, for instance.
 
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