nintendo switch Nintendo Switch Online Service costs money

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, adm0n said:

I'm pretty sure they get a cut of physical games too. The difference here is the volume. Steam is HUGEE. And they only have to provide the infrastructure. They make a lot of money of steam. And I don't even really know if they are seriously developing games anymore :c so they don't have expense like other console manufacturers, who even used to sell at a loss. 

I think they take a cut on physical games that are Steam-only. As for games that you can activate the key regardless of platform I doubt they can really take a cut on it.

Valve does seem to be developing a lot of shit we don't see. A Source 2 port of CS:GO is known to be in development, Steam itself just came off of a huge update, SteamVR is slowly but very surely being chipped at, HLVR is known to exist; pretty much the only dead thing in Valve right now is Team Fortress 2, and even then no one knows what the future update will be, which is quite uncommon for TF.

[SteveGrabowski0]

10 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

not anymore and even in the past they know they are going to recover that though game sales if the person buys one game

The initial cost of the PS4 was $381 to get one into a retailer's hands. I have heard the retailer takes a 20% cut on console sales (I think the source was Michael Pachter). So at $399 sale price the retailer would then be taking almost $80 in for its cut, so Sony would be losing almost $62 on each launch PS4.

[spartaman64]

5 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

The initial cost of the PS4 was $381 to get one into a retailer's hands. I have heard the retailer takes a 20% cut on console sales (I think the source was Michael Pachter). So at $399 sale price the retailer would then be taking almost $80 in for its cut, so Sony would be losing almost $62 on each launch PS4.

the 381 figure is probably the cost that consumers pay for the hardware which is likely not what sony pays

[Tech Enthusiast]

1 hour ago, Demonking said:

It's sad to see so many on here accepting this anti consumer bullshit, This is not ok steam, GOG, origin, and even the trash uplay offers free online.

Dear God.

A company charging for a service they have to pay for, in order to have a service for your enjoyment.

How anti-consumer to charge less than 2 bucks a month for that!

 

Comparing this to Steam just shows how little you have thought about this.

• Steam is way more expensive, but others pay the money. (30% cut on every sale)
• GOG is basically the same. They charge a little less from what I hear (not confirmed), but they still have that income.
• Origin is a big pile of crap, no one uses it without being forced to. IF they would charge for that, the service would die. So you can take that as a marketing thing, not because they love you as a consumer so much.

Running servers cost money. Having staff to keep the servers running costs money.

Demanding it to be free is a big fat entitlement issue.

Calling it "anti-consumer bullshit" is flat out living in another reality. I sure hope you work for free as well and don't do anti-consumer bullshit like taking payment for your work.

[Stefan Payne]

2 hours ago, Wilhelm_Andre said:

Nintendo switch's Online service will cost money from September 2018.

Who would have thought THAT...

Well, not surprising...

 

2 hours ago, adm0n said:

Every Console manufacturer charges money for their online experience. Servers cost money to maintain and they like to have an amount they can work with every month.

Ys, absolutely...

2 hours ago, adm0n said:

I think both microsoft and playstation offerings a 3 times as expensive.

About correct, both cost ~60€/Year

But there are also sales about that, either 25% off or 15 for 12 and other stuff...

2 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

so just like xbox live and psn

...without the Monthly games of course...

At least for one of those its pretty nice and you can get like 4 Games/Month. The other one wasn't that amazing in the last couple of months...

[adm0n]

42 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

I think they take a cut on physical games that are Steam-only. As for games that you can activate the key regardless of platform I doubt they can really take a cut on it.

I was talking about Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, sorry for the misunderstanding.

43 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Valve does seem to be developing a lot of shit we don't see. A Source 2 port of CS:GO is known to be in development, Steam itself just came off of a huge update, SteamVR is slowly but very surely being chipped at, HLVR is known to exist; pretty much the only dead thing in Valve right now is Team Fortress 2, and even then no one knows what the future update will be, which is quite uncommon for TF.

Nothing of that is anything major. I would speculate they have some huge VR game in the making that will revolutionize everything and will launch with Gen 2 but ... meh, who knows.

 

9 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

About correct, both cost ~60€/Year

But there are also sales about that, either 25% off or 15 for 12 and other stuff...

And Nintendos is 20€ here? I didn't really check that to be honest ._.

10 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

...without the Monthly games of course...

You do get some NES games with multiplayer added to them, as well as some special offers. Hopefully they add SNES and so on down the line (:

[Demonking]

9 minutes ago, Rattenmann said:

Dear God.

A company charging for a service they have to pay for, in order to have a service for your enjoyment.

How anti-consumer to charge less than 2 bucks a month for that!

 

Comparing this to Steam just shows how little you have thought about this.

• Steam is way more expensive, but others pay the money. (30% cut on every sale)
• GOG is basically the same. They charge a little less from what I hear (not confirmed), but they still have that income.
• Origin is a big pile of crap, no one uses it without being forced to. IF they would charge for that, the service would die. So you can take that as a marketing thing, not because they love you as a consumer so much.

Running servers cost money. Having staff to keep the servers running costs money.

Demanding it to be free is a big fat entitlement issue.

Calling it "anti-consumer bullshit" is flat out living in another reality. I sure hope you work for free as well and don't do anti-consumer bullshit like taking payment for your work.

They don't run the servers, the 3rd parties do activision,EA ubisoft ect pay for those and run them sony,microosoft and nintendo  don't run shit they force you to pay for no reason also microsoft games that are on the windows store on PC are free while xbox users have to pay. This is laughable "Steam is way more expensive, but others pay the money. (30% cut on every sale)" you act like the console makers don't make 3rd parties pay royalties for ever game sold,that's how they make most of they $ off games they don't run or pay servers for. This Video debunks all your anti consumer talking points

 

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, adm0n said:

I was talking about Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Nothing of that is anything major. I would speculate they have some huge VR game in the making that will revolutionize everything and will launch with Gen 2 but ... meh, who knows.

Oh yeah, the three do take cuts from physical games as they handle distribution and manufacturing of the physical copies.

Considering with how deeply invested Valve is with VR, it wouldn't shock me if their next big title is a VR title, like how Half-Life 2 was the DirectX 9 seller.

[adm0n]

7 minutes ago, Demonking said:

They don't run the servers, the 3rd parties do activision,EA ubisoft ect pay for those

actually there aren't that many console games that use dedicated servers at all.

Source:

Spoiler

 

The console manufactures provide everything else.
The thing is, if they would stop taking money for it, you would soon see some form of advertisement thrown on there, to make up the cost.

I much rather have ad-free environment.

Granted they could have more features for what you pay, but I have to say that the Nintendo offering seems quite reasonable.

[Tribalinius]

2 hours ago, Demonking said:

Steam and Xbox  offers cloud saves free.

And what's your point exactly? MS business model seems to work just fine. If they make enough money with XBOX Live to be able to offer free Azure space to non-subscribers, good for them. I've only mentioned Nintendo Cloud saves mainly because it's a feature that has been asked for since the console launched last year and should have been too mind you.

 

It's debatable if it should be included or not without a premium subscription though but it's a fair price for what's included. At 2$ /month to have access to online multiplayer, Nintendo NES games with added online multiplayer and Cloud saves, it's not too shabby. If they keep that price while adding more content to it later down the line, it's even better.
 

16 minutes ago, Demonking said:

They don't run the servers, the 3rd parties do activision,EA ubisoft ect pay for those and run them sony,microosoft and nintendo  don't run shit they force you to pay for no reason also microsoft games that are on the windows store on PC are free while xbox users have to pay. This is laughable "Steam is way more expensive, but others pay the money. (30% cut on every sale)" you act like the console makers don't make 3rd parties pay royalties for ever game sold,that's how they make most of they $ off games they don't run or pay servers for. This Video debunks all your anti consumer talking points

 

For now, most of the multiplayer showstoppers on the console are 1st party. I'm pretty sure Splatoon, Mario Kart and, eventually, Smash are/will not be hosted at Activision or EA servers ;). They still need to maintain and run their infrastructure and, obviously, they also want to make some money out of the service too.

[Stefan Payne]

59 minutes ago, adm0n said:

And Nintendos is 20€ here? I didn't really check that to be honest ._.

According to the Initial Post, yeah.

59 minutes ago, adm0n said:

You do get some NES games with multiplayer added to them, as well as some special offers. Hopefully they add SNES and so on down the line (:

Well, not that amazing tbh, but they don't have that much and the Service isn't running yet.

 

I'd like to see a Gamecube or Wii Game, but they only have the Switch right now, the WiiU is EOL and didn't sell all that well...

Maybe they should do a WiiU 2 with the Playstation4 (PRO) APU or something like that...

Yeah, I kinda like(d) the WiiU, it was an interesting concept. But I think the pad was totally overbuilt....

[Nowak]

@Wilhelm_Andre Older than the sun. This has been known since January 2017, before the Switch even launched.

 

Also, just because other console makers charge for online doesn't make it right, especially in the case of Nintendo, who can't provide online service worth shit, and the PC, where online multiplayer is largely free because it's not a premium service anymore.

 

41 minutes ago, Tribalinius said:

I'm pretty sure Splatoon, Mario Kart and, eventually, Smash are/will not be hosted at Activision or EA servers ;). They still need to maintain and run their infrastructure and, obviously, they also want to make some money out of the service too.

Those games are P2P btw. You're paying for nothing.

[adm0n]

7 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Well, not that amazing tbh, but they don't have that much and the Service isn't running yet.

I'll actually believe that they'll have payed online only when they actually launch it ._.

8 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

I'd like to see a Gamecube or Wii Game, but they only have the Switch right now, the WiiU is EOL and didn't sell all that well...

Maybe they should do a WiiU 2 with the Playstation4 (PRO) APU or something like that...

Pretty unlikely. They can still make a lot of money selling gamecube games for 10€ or 15€ and Wii games will already be somewhat difficult to emulate (but still possible).

They can get a lot of money by selling them one by one instead of offering them in the payed online. Remastering them is also lucrative and quite cheap.

11 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Maybe they should do a WiiU 2 with the Playstation4 (PRO) APU or something like that...

A huge problem of the WiiU is, that apparently no one got that it was even a new console. They all thought it was just the pad and it would work with the normal wii. They had to 'switch' the name. Also I don't know why anyone would buy a strong console from Nintendo anymore. There would be almost no reason, besides their few IPs...

14 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Yeah, I kinda like(d) the WiiU, it was an interesting concept. But I think the pad was totally overbuilt....

I liked the concept, too. It was like a DS but as a home system and more awesome and the DS was really awesome. But having additional features to support is harsh for developers. Just getting the game out at all is already hell ... so they avoid extra work and then all the cool concepts that could've been realized wind up being forgotten :c

[SteveGrabowski0]

2 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

the 381 figure is probably the cost that consumers pay for the hardware which is likely not what sony pays

How does a consumer pay for one of the SOC in the PS4?

[ARikozuM]

2 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

The initial cost of the PS4 was $381 to get one into a retailer's hands. I have heard the retailer takes a 20% cut on console sales (I think the source was Michael Pachter). So at $399 sale price the retailer would then be taking almost $80 in for its cut, so Sony would be losing almost $62 on each launch PS4.

That has to be the dumbest thing I've heard. Retailers pay wholesale and then mark the product at MSRP. The difference between wholesale/distribution and retail is the profit that the retailer makes. I doubt that Microsoft or Sony is letting GameStop (an example) take an extra 20% from the console's profits. 

 

I can see Microsoft or Sony selling a console for $300 when it took $350 to produce, but not selling it at a measly $200 once BoM, R&D, and retailer margin are accounted for. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

That has to be the dumbest thing I've heard. Retailers pay wholesale and then mark the product at MSRP. The difference between wholesale/distribution and retail is the profit that the retailer makes. I doubt that Microsoft or Sony is letting GameStop (an example) take an extra 20% from the console's profits. 

 

I can see Microsoft or Sony selling a console for $300 when it took $350 to produce, but not selling it at a measly $200 once BoM, R&D, and retailer margin are accounted for. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/11/20/at-399-retail-sure-sonys-making-a-loss-on-a-ps-4-that-costs-381-to-build/#410a9354776b

 

Quote

But there is still that one other line that has to be added into the price they're charging. For the retailers do not shift Sony's kit out of the goodness of their hearts. They want a slice of the action too, of course. Looking at the Brazilian pricing that Sony has revealed in detail it looks like that retail margin is around 20% or so.

 

Assume that it's not dissimilar in the US (and I see no reason why it would be) and what we've actually got is at $399 retail Sony is collecting $320 from the retailer. And with a build cost at $381 at least my version of math puts that at a $61 loss per box. Again, I agree that this is less than the loss on the PS 3, but an immediate profit, or even an immediate margin, it isn't.

 

[Ithanul]

27 minutes ago, NowakVulpix said:

@Wilhelm_Andre Older than the sun. This has been known since January 2017, before the Switch even launched.

Yep, this info been out for a good long while now.

[Thaldor]

2 hours ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

People always argue that Steam is free, but they tend to miss a big part of why it's free. Where Valve gets you is that they take a cut of every game sale, and if it's a Valve game they take 100% of that, basically, and use it towards their company. Steam's servers are maintained through Valve's cut of the purchase they get from every game sale.

Now, the difference between Steam and, say, Xbox Live, is that not everyone buys digital games on Xbox Live, while almost everyone buys digitally on Steam. They gotta charge otherwise they can't competently keep the servers running.

Just wanted to point out this one.

 

There is one huge difference between Steam and consoles. Consoles take even larger cut from the profits because someone needs to make those discs and I'm 100% positive that especially Nintendo won't give that to some developer to handle by themselves. Even when PS4 games are on just a fancier looking Blu-Ray which costs probably 5 cents to produce, Sony is still probably taking a much more from the every game produced than that 5 cents to cover the production, not even talking about Nintendo with it's fancier looking SD card which probably costs more than 5 cents to produce.

 

Personally I think this is jsut as much BS as it is with PS and Xbox and just as BS as with games with subscribtions. I don't pay 60€ for a game that I need to pay even 1€/month to play just as I won't pay 300-400€ for a console that is retarded behind even 1€/month subscribtion fee. And even if it was something like multiplayer features removed and you get to play 20 games that probably are included in NES/SNES mini or the half million different calssic games packs out there for every other Nintendo console. As long as there's nothing vital in the subscribtion (which would enrage every single console fan even) I don't really believe they need the subscribtion moneys to run the servers (one bigger patch for the console and I believe there will be more traffic and stress on the server in a single day that one game generates through a year).

 

But that is just one reason why I haven't bought a new console since Wii and Xbox 360 (except NES and SNES minis and then some second hand stuff like Dreamcast).

[spartaman64]

31 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

How does a consumer pay for one of the SOC in the PS4?

afaik sony would never release actual numbers for what they pay so the person probably just took the cost of comparable hardware. 

[spartaman64]

28 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/11/20/at-399-retail-sure-sonys-making-a-loss-on-a-ps-4-that-costs-381-to-build/#410a9354776b

 

 

 

9 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

afaik sony would never release actual numbers for what they pay so the person probably just took the cost of comparable hardware. 

i heard people say that sony and microsoft are making profit from hardware sales but i guess we are wrong but they can make a profit from the games they sell and dont need the psn/xlive fees. also i dont think the losses they take is substantial enough to justify the subscription for the console to be usable. if msi offers to sell you motherboards at a 50 dollar loss in return for you to pay them 5 dollars a month to access the internet i dont think many people would take them up on the offer

[Tribalinius]

2 hours ago, NowakVulpix said:

Those games are P2P btw.

Well, I learned something new today.

[Nowak]

1 minute ago, Tribalinius said:

Well, I learned something new today.

Pretty much every Nintendo game with online multiplayer uses P2P for the actual multiplayer component. They're charging us for nothing.

[Drak3]

3 minutes ago, NowakVulpix said:

Pretty much every Nintendo game with online multiplayer uses P2P for the actual multiplayer component. They're charging us for nothing.

Matchmaking requires dedicated servers, at very minimum, to establish P2P matches.

 

They're charging you for that.

[Master Disaster]

13 hours ago, Wilhelm_Andre said:

Nintendo switch's Online service will cost money from September 2018.

 

https://www.geek.com/games/nintendo-switch-now-has-a-virtual-console-sort-of-1691743/

https://www.nintendo.com/switch/online-service/

 

So i have had the Nintendo switch for 6 months now and i love to play splatoon but if they gonna start asking for money from me to play online and use the crappy app i think that many players will stop playing. I will not pay to play online even tho its not that expensive it still adds up to what i paid for the game.

If i pay 39$ for a game and need to pay 19,99$ for 12 moths of online service (Prices gotten form nintendo's website) that will be 58,99$ for the game with online feature.

The payment gives me Access to: The app, The online service and 20 NES games. Why couldn't only the nes games be paid service and not take away online part from me.

 

Let me hear what you think of this. I don't like it at all but maybe some of you got some more information on it.

 

From

(Norwegian dyslexic person)

 

You do realise Nintendo announced the service would cost before the Switches launch event, right? That screenshot you posted has been on Nintendo's website since like April.

 

[RuffRuffmcgruff]

14 hours ago, Demonking said:

It's sad to see so many on here accepting this anti consumer bullshit, This is not ok steam, GOG, origin, and even the trash uplay offers free online.

This guy is completely right, 10- 15 years ago this would've sent shockwaves through the gaming community, especially for Sony and Nintendo fans. The major bonus of having a ps3 was free online. Watch it, another 5 years and we'll have to pay to play online on PC.