cross-posted from: https://ani.social/post/35665810
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
I agree. It's stupid either way, but the point of game chat is to use while playing games online multiplayer and in order to play online multiplayer you need to switch online subscription as is true with most consoles. Just the fact that it's attached to a physical button that launches an ad if you don't have it though, yeah that's pretty garbage.
During the free trial, I suppose one could use it to just use the console as a video chat, but who is actually using that over something like discord?
Forcing people to pay for in-game chat is absurdly greedy. There's no other way to frame it.
The actual cost of maintaining chat infrastructure is so low it might as well be free. So why are they charging for it? The answer: Pure greed. The purest!
In fairness they're not charging for in-game chat, they're charging for online access. I still think paying for online access is ridiculous, but the monthly fee is not a "access game chat" fee, it's "access online multiplayer" fee and game chat is included in that.
You're not forced. Infrastructure is not free.