Nintendo is so proud of the feature that it even included a little C button right on your Joy-Con (which was a point of excited speculation before the reveal) so you can jump into Game Chat whenever you like.

Unfortunately, it also tried to bury the fact that this Game Chat feature will actually require a Nintendo Switch Online subscription once the free trial period ends on March 31, 2026.

Now, you may be wondering what the button does if you don’t have a subscription? Thankfully, Nintendo’s vice president of player and product experience, Bill Trinen, was interviewed by Polygon on that very same topic. Trinen explains that the button will let you “find out about the NSO subscription there and get a sense of some of the functionality.” It’s basically a button that asks you to pay up.

It’s basically a button that asks you to pay up

We’ve gotten to the point where button functions are microtransactions…

This is why I emulate games and just use Linux

  • musicalphysics@discuss.onlineEnglish
    23·
    2 hours ago

    How long should Nintendo save your data when you aren’t paying them? Why should they keep it for any length of time?

    Nintendo has qualification processes because bad games almost destroyed the industry in the 80s.

    Steam doesn’t ensure quality. How would steam possibly try to charge for internet access on a device they didn’t produce, control, or sell you?

    Businesses charge users for things that users value. Simple as that. It isn’t unique to Nintendo or the games industry. Cell phone folks charged for texts that didn’t cost them anything to deliver. Why? People valued texts and were willing to pay. We got out of that because of Apple but now people are angry at Apple about it.