What we know up to here about NSOs

The Nintendo Switch has been out for over a year and is a huge success, but since then, it has not offered an appropriate online service. This will change next Tuesday, September 18th. Nintendo shared most of the details about the service and the good news, the bad news and the bad news.

The beloved video game company made a lot of announcements in its latest Nintendo Direct yesterday and has released more detailed information about Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) on its website. Until now, if you were playing games like Splatoon 2 online, it was free. Starting Tuesday, you'll have to shell out $ 3.99 a month or $ 19.99 a year for the privilege of sharing opponents halfway around the world. It is also possible to pay $ 7.99 for 3 months of service.

The best news seems to be that NSO will bring a bunch of games from the original NES to the Switch with more add-on over time. But it's not just the original games; Nintendo adds multiplayer features online, although it's hard to know what they will look like for each game. This is the initial lineup:

Football, Tennis, Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., Fighting Balls, Ice Climber, Dr. Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros. 3, Double Dragon, River City Ransom, Ghosts Goblins, Tecmo Bowl, Gradius, Pro Wrestling, Excitebike, Yoshi, Ice Hockey and Baseball.

Before the end of the year, these games will join the NOS library:

Solomon's Key, NES Open Golf Tournament, Super Dodgeball, Metroid, Mighty Bomb Jack, Twinbee, Wario Woods, Ninja Gaiden and Adventures of Lolo.

Nintendo paid attention to the popularity of its NES Classic Edition and its nostalgia. With NES games, the Switch receives NES controllers. An exit date has not been announced yet, but customers will be limited to one pair per paid account. That's good, you must have a NOS account to buy them and they will cost you $ 60. There is no reason to complain about the required account, because you could not access any of the NES games without it, and just look at how ridiculous these things are when they are loaded on the switch:

Like.

It is also important to note that you will need an active NOS subscription to access the games, but they will be available offline for up to seven days while your subscription is active. The games will remain on the console but you will need to register every seven days to continue playing them.

The most crucial and practical feature of NOS is that we will finally get backups in the cloud. For many people, this extra security will bring great peace of mind, especially considering the fact that the switch is a portable device that only needs to be lost, stolen or destroyed. You will be able to access cloud backups on a friend device and transfer your files to a new unit if a certain disaster occurs. But there seems to be some confusion about the security of your cloud service if your subscriptions are canceled.

In the FAQs and customer support pages that were downloaded today, Nintendo only states that it "can not guarantee that the cloud backup data will be retained after an extended period of time from the end of your subscription". Although Nintendo's service is cheaper than Sony's PlayStation Plus, Sony retains at least the data for six months. As a result, you have a new credit card and you forgot to update your renewal information. Microsoft offers free cloud storage on Xbox Live. We asked Nintendo to ask us what kind of leeway users could wait before their hard-earned backup file disappeared. We will update this message when we receive an answer.

Another thing to keep in mind with cloud backups is that Nintendo said it would not be available for all games. We do not know which games will still be excluded, but Splatoon 2 and Dark Souls: Remastered were mentioned earlier this week when the company told Kotaku it was worried that cloud backups would be used to cheat under certain circumstances.

Exceptions will also be made for some games, allowing you to play online without paying anything in some cases. One million college students across the country can all breathe because Nintendo says in its FAQ Fortnite will remain free to play.