The online mobile application Nintendo Switch has been installed by 5 million people

Which means that about a quarter of Switch's user base has succumbed to its use.

The online implementation of Nintendo on the Switch is just ridiculous. Although the net code for online games is correct, the problem is related to how the features are handled, with basic features such as voice chat delegated to a smartphone app, instead of being natively supported on the system (some games like Fortnite always support native voice chat on Switch).

This means that for the full Online experience on the switch, you need to download and sync with the smartphone app. What a lot of people are doing apparently. According to a report from the Sensor Tower mobile app analytics company, 5 million people have now installed the smartphone app, which means that a quarter of the installation base of Switch (nearly 20 million at last count) is shipped.

If these numbers are directly related to the number of subscriptions that the newly launched Nintendo Switch Online service may have generated – which is not necessarily the case, but can serve as a basis – Nintendo is probably satisfied of the results. Which is a shame, because it means that we are stuck with this weird implementation online, instead of something reasonable that we could have obtained otherwise.