Isn't this really old news?

The Switch 2 is a ticking time bomb, a lot of its functions, including gaming itself if considering the "game key cards", being tied to services.

anyone who uses nintendo products gets what they deserve

Yep until manufacturers and isps block access to distrowatch 😩🙄

Leave it to Shitendo to include a dedicated button that does nothing but advertise a subscription for a service that is completely free on PC. Free on a Switch too, if you mod it first.

Don't worry, though, homebrew software will allow you to rebind it to something else. Just wait for that, and don't use Nintendo's consoles unmodded. Stock firmware is a mostly unusable piece of shit.

It's been 10 years since the original Switch launched, and the only themes you get are... light and dark. Or you can have thousands of themes if you jailbreak the console. And save managers. And cheats if you want to skip the grind in some games. Better performance on Switch OLED and Lite. Emulation of older systems. And the list goes on and on.

There's so much these consoles are capable of, that Nintendo desperately wants to block or charge you insane prices for. Mostly just block.

Realistically, this is also true of the Dualsense on PS5. It has a clear, dedicated LED button to disable the microphone, and that mic is rarely used for anything but online chat.

Article from april 7th 2025. And nobody uses it still.

Wow wait until they find out you can do this for free on the internet for like, the last 2 decades.

Why do people post screenshots of articles? You even quoted it!

Post a damn link!

Wait, you have to have an online subscription to play with other people remotely anyway... Why does it matter that you can't use a voice chat feature without that same subscription...?

Like, as a splatoon player who played and grind-ed rank without actual game servers while paying a subscription I absolutely was and still am mad about THAT, but given that thats the case, does it matter that you can't use voice chat without a subscription...? Am I just totally missing something?

Everyone defending Nintendo in here for their online subscription fees are actually the mildly infuriating part for me personally. I'm a game developer and once attempted to develop an online game on Switch and other consoles. It was surprising to me to learn that exactly zero of the profits they rake in from their player base goes towards providing any server architecture whatsoever for developers on the platforms to use. This means that all costs associated with hosting servers for online functionality of games on the platform are the responsibility of each developer.

I fail to see what service they are providing apart from enabling players to access the Internet on a device they already paid for. I really don't think players understand this.

I also think it's important to point out that it's at least twice as difficult to get a game through Nintendo Lotcheck aka certification if you have any online features whatsoever due to their extreme requirements, which ends up costing a lot more development time. Steam on the other hand has an almost non existent certification process and charges players nothing to access the Internet.

I will end my rant with one more important point. I had my switch stolen a while back. I had been playing Animal Crossing for years, all through the pandemic and had a very nicely curated island and house. I had been paying for Nintendo Online monthly and had my island backed up. However I didn't purchase a new switch right away due to financial reasons and speed thought it foolish to keep paying my Nintendo Online membership so I canceled. After about 2 years I saw they announced a new update and finally had some extra money so I found a used Switch online. To my dismay, even though I reactivated my Nintendo Online subscription, Nintendo deleted my entire cloud save data repository for all my games, including Animal Crossing due to having not paid in over 12 months. This is unacceptable. Steam has not charged me a penny for online cloud service in all my years of having an account which started back on in the days of CS1.6. They have every save data file for every game I've ever played with zero threat of deletion. I cannot believe Nintendo thinks they were justified in deleting my data. I had to start Animal Crossing over from scratch. Needless to say I will not be subscribing to Nintendo Online ever again. Do not trust them with your data.

Now, you may be wondering what the button does if you don’t have a subscription? 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.

Was not this already known after the release of Switch 2? I can vaguely remember people complaining that you needed an subscription to use the particular feature and if they did not, the button was just.. an useless button.

This is why I emulate games and just use Linux

I too emulate Switch 1 games but unfortunately, Switch 2 games cannot be emulated yet.

I remember this article from, oh, it says it right there, April 2025. Turns out no one who owns the things actually cares. And if you do, you pay for NSO.

I don’t have a Switch 2 and am not interested in getting one, but I do know rage-bait articles about non-issues. I can’t understand someone throwing a tantrum because there’s a button on their controller that they don’t need. Just ignore it?

Hey, I bought a car that has a “Bluelink+” option to talk to their support people. It’s a subscription service which I don’t pay for. It doesn’t harm me in the least that the button is there and I don’t use it. I don’t even mind that the ads for the car mention that it’s a feature. It would be weird if it did upset me.

Wow. Even Sony doesn't require the subscription service to voice chat with friends.

Lots of Nintendo suckers in here, huh. As for me, I vowed to never buy anything from them anymore, after they tried to basically patent summoning in games.

This is a year old rage bait piece.

I have a switch2 since launch, and had no idea this was a contending point.

Personally I pay between 7€ and 11€ a year for the subscription and am fine with all that it brings.

I don't own a switch, nor do I care for Nintendo.

But why are we posting news that's older than a year? Got nothing new?

The switch 2 has a button dedicated to a specific feature that requires payment. Valid to criticize, but also I can't imagine actually caring that much.

I assume dedicated "copilot" button on notebooks will await same fait.

Nothing burger. You need an online subscription to play online, like every console. How many people are realistically going to use a Nintendo Switch to hop on Game Chat and NOT play online games with the people you are chatting with?