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[Thoughts] How I would fix Nintendo online's expansion pack


The expansion pack for Nintendo's online subscription is quite lack lustre as it stands

source: www.nintendo.co.uk

Ever since Nintendo has started making people pay for online I have been a member of the subscription. This is because of games such as Splatoon and Smash bros. Over the years Nintendo has added more to the normal subscription with the addition of select NES, SNES and Game boy games being playable on downloadable apps. These were interesting at first but with them releasing games very sparsely I quickly lost interest in that aspect of it. So, again, I just simply stayed subscribed to play my games online. 

In 2021 Nintendo decided to introduce a new tier to the online subscription called the "Expansion Pack". This new tier allowed you to gain access to some N64 games and the Animal Crossing DLC. While this is a step up in offerings, this pack costs around double the normal subscription just for a few N64 games and the Animal Crossing DLC. Since 2021 Nintendo has added both game boy advance and Mega Drive games to this expansion pack as well as the Mario Kart 8 DLC and Splatoon 2 octo expansion. Even with these I still don't think it's worth it. By the time they added the Splatoon DLC most people would have already bought it. The Mario Kart DLC is decent but with it covering two years with it's content it means you would need to subscribe for 2 years to play all the content rather than just making a one off payment. The Mega Drive and Game Boy Advance games suffered the same issues as the other game apps, where they have not been getting updated frequently enough with substantial titles. 

So, how would I fix it? I can think of three things that would immediately get me more interested in this service. Firstly, I would speed up the rate of which new games are added to the respective apps, at the moment we are lucky to get a few every month or two. Next, I would add all, yes all, DLC to the subscription, or at least all first party DLC to it. On top of this I would add DLC day one to the service, this would build on the unique thing about this service compared to other ones in the industry. Lastly, I would have more game trails. Game trails are something I didn't mention earlier as they are that forgettable, but they give you the full game for a set amount of time. I would increase the frequency of these trails, because at the moment they are very rare. To balance this I would put a limit on how much game time the player gets. This is because on one of the game trails for Mario Tennis I completed the whole story and found no value in then getting the game. It's meant to be a "trail" not the full game.

Source: www.keengamer.com

With these changes I would consider buying the subscription much more than I do currently. The subscriptions by Xbox and PlayStation are so much better than what Nintendo offers and doing these I feel would put it up to the same level. Hopefully, with the next console, Nintendo iterates on this subscription based system as it really needs some adjusting. 

That's it for this blog, stay connected!


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