Nintendo has said that it will continue to improve and expand on its Switch Online service as well as its recently released premium Expansion Pack – possibly in response to the poor reception to its pricing and recent additions.
As part of its latest Corporate Management Briefing, Nintendo has stated that it will "continue to improve and expand both Nintendo Switch Online and Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack" in order to provide services that satisfy its fanbase.
The pledge to improve comes shortly after the company experienced a rocky start to the launch of its premium Expansion Pack subscription service. The service, which launched last month, adds a new membership tier to Nintendo Switch Online that gives players access to an expanding catalog of Nintendo 64 and Sega Mega Drive games, as well as paid DLC (currently in the form of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Happy Home Paradise pack).
However, following its release Nintendo received backlash from some of its fanbase, who reported that they were experiencing a number of issues with classic games running on the handheld. Complaints from the community varied from player to player, however, most commonly seemed to revolve around issues with input lag, sound delays, frame rate, and incorrect controller layouts. Nintendo doesn't specificially mention the backlash as the reason for its comments on improving the service.
Despite taking some criticism over the launch of the premium tier subscription service, elsewhere in the briefing Nintendo announced that it has seen an overall increase in the number of players subscribed to Nintendo Switch Online this past year. The publisher stated that the number of players accessing its online services had now exceeded 32 million - a figure up 6 million from this time last year.
It isn't particularly surprising to see that this figure has increased across the last year considering the continued popularity that Nintendo has seen across the hardware market. According to data published by the NPD Group, Nintendo's handheld has remained a popular choice for US consumers throughout 2021. Data from the Group showed the Switch to have a strong grasp over the US monthly hardware charts for units sold where it consistently held pole position in the charts for 33-months straight. While that reign was finally ended by Sony's PlayStation 5 this September, the additional Switch's sold across that time are likely to have contributed to an increase in Switch Online members.
For more from Nintendo, make sure to check out this article detailing how the publisher is still discussing what its next console after the Switch might be.
Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
source https://www.ign.com/articles/nintendo-online-expansion-pack-improve-expand
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