Sheikah

For those who are buying it, you can get it for £15.67 here. Edit: Ike just beat me to it.

Assuming gunge is the fluorescent, synthetic stuff that was present in most 90s kids gameshows, I'm hoping for your sake it was that rather than gunk.

Well Sony were giving away the online service on PS3 for free (which eventually was reasonably comparable to XBL in terms of features after a long teething period), as are Steam (still to this day)...so I don't see why we should assume that they couldn't offer this service plus lesser games if they only charged a third of what they currently do. I think almost certainly the 40 quid tag of these annual subscriptions is there to make them money, rather than it just about covering the cost of the services provided. As I've said before, you can compare Nintendo's services to the more expensive ones because they are both being sold for money. We make these comparisons all the time - for instance if I was to buy broadband, I would still compare a cheaper package with a more expensive one in terms of features and speed for the money, etc. If a broadband package was half the price of the other but the max speed was only a fifth (apt comparison here), I would not consider that a particularly good saving. If one online sub costs half of the other services, you'd expect it to have at least the fundamental components for a decent modern online service (messaging, voice chat) with less of the bells an whistles (i.e. big retail games). An online sub should at least get the basics right before adding cherries on top.

Absolutely, if they're charging for it then you can't claim they don't (or shouldn't) care much about it. It's a bit mad to say people should accept it too. People have bought a console long back and only now are we learning the many caveats to the service that will launch. Like not all games supporting cloud saving for totally unconvincing reasons. People complaining about things in large enough numbers has also been shown time and time again to have results (see Star Wars Battlefront 2).

Yup, anything like completing it again on a hard/extreme difficulty or repeat the game making the opposite choices sucks. I can usually determine whether it will be fun to go for a platinum or not so I never feel like I'm compelled to get them. I'm happier they're there overall.

But the things people expect of an online service are totally reasonable asks - messaging, voice chat (cross game), universal cloud saving. That's why I do not agree with Kaxxx's comment in the slightest. As for "is messaging useful", of course, I use it all the time. Also, when you select a friend and click "invite to game" this is done via a message notification. If they're playing a different game (or even the same game but different lobby) at the time they get alerted and can choose to play with you instead. Without this you have to hope that you have the friend on WhatsApp or something (which I'm sure is not necessarily the case for N-E friends or other gaming acquaintances) and that they're checking their phone and not totally engrossed in the game. It's a very poor alternative to in-game messaging. You also have to ask yourself what you're paying for if you can't message people or voice chat with them. Right now it's just a readout of what game people are currently playing.

I'm a bit lost by this - what do you mean? Just an example, but on Switch you can't even message friends on your friends list. To me it'll be absolutely absurd if this stays the same after they start charging, and not unreasonable to challenge them about it. At present you cannot arrange matchmaking without using external means which is pretty crazy in this day and age.

Well you don't actually pay £1.50 a month - that's the per month cost breakdown if you pay the one-time annual cost up front. So the cost you're paying is actually £18 in one go - if you want to pay monthly then it's £3.49 a month. What it feels like you're doing is what you often see in marketing - making something sound less by breaking it down into shorter lengths of time. You can make any amount of money sound small if you do that. I could even argue my PS4 Pro cost just 7 pounds a month over the full duration of when I'll use it to make it sound like a frivolous amount.

It's all relative though when you say something is expensive - expensive doesn't mean it's a lot of money, just a lot of money for what you're getting. And by that I don't mean the actual cost of the games you're getting, but the perceived value - I don't think it's a surprise to say that most people will not place much value on this NES offering. They are missing just too many features in their online service (the fundamental part of a paid online subscription) to justify this cost. Saying it's £1.50 a month is all well and good to make it sound smaller but it's still £18 a year for very little to show. I sincerely doubt if online was optional many here would be subscribing for these NES games. Most NES enthusiasts would likely have already picked up the recent NES mini anyhow.

I actually think this is expensive for what it is. It's more than half the price of the competitor but it's not even close to half the offering. It sounds like a really barebones service.

For a portable games console this is kind of silly. You could go on holiday for two weeks and only be able to play on those particular games for one. And not everywhere has free WiFi, and some you can only connect to after visiting a splash page (incompatibility issues).

This. Nintendo's offering and their games just do not justify paying for online IMO.

What are your thoughts on this game Hero?

I thought the very same when I watched their review the other day. Probably one of the most enjoyable video reviews I've ever watched.

Mario Kart 8 sold 8 million on Wii U, far more copies than your average game (even those that get remastered).

I finished 0 the other day and was genuinely sad when it ended. What a fantastic game.

But porting is clearly costing them just a fraction of the original cost of developing a game from scratch. This is basically why ports and remasters are usually always cheaper, while still making the developer a profit.

MK8 is not a current gen port, you keep saying that. The Wii U is a last generation console. You can tell this by it being the generation that came before this one. I am also not following your logic - if quality should determine price, then good SNES games should be thirty quid on eShop. Saying that they're over 10 years old as a way to justify bargain prices doesn't make sense. To give an example of prices usually going down even after one generation - remember when Wii games got released on Wii U eShop? They were cheaper than when they launched on Wii. This is the point I'm making - they're only charging more this time because the Wii U was such a flop. And "damage to the industry"? We see price reductions over time across the board, even on things like films too. We even see it on games like Witcher 3, which have not resorted to thing like microtransactions. How many people do you think continue to go out and buy a game like Xenoblade after it's like a year old? If anything dropping prices is healthy because otherwise hardly anyone else continues to buy it. Dropping prices gives a cash injection from sales that you normally don't see. I fail to see how it's anything but healthy for the developers who made the game. You're just not going to get further sales unless your game is extremely mainstream and popular.

Ok then, you feel you should be paying full price for a game you already played? Despite the fact you admitted earlier you would pay less on the other consoles if you could? What makes Nintendo games so deserving of a second full price splash? I can think of ports and remakes just as good that haven't launched full price. We are accustomed to paying less for titles from a previous generation, that's just the way it always goes. The company makes a little extra cash for a game they re-release with minimal effort. I genuinely didn't think this would be a point of contention on account of it being such common sense. I find it strange that you brought up the Shadow of the Colossus remake to make a point here, and I think it underlies how little thought you are putting into making your points. The amount of work they put into that game was, pardon the pun, colossal. To quote Eurogamer: The fact that a remake of this quality was released at a budget price while Nintendo ports (not remakes) are not is telling. Frankly, I find it a little disturbing how absolutely in Nintendo's pocket you are. We can see why Nintendo are charging full price (because profit) but that doesn't mean we have to agree with it.

This is basically it. Yeah, Nintendo can charge full whack again, and make more money from the people who never had a Wii U. It's more or less a question of integrity - they can charge a discounted rate if they want, given its a port, or not. We all know that people who bought it the first time that shouldn't be paying full price again at least. I assume you mean games like Black Flag, which were released on consoles like PS4 just months after PS3. Not the 3 to 4 years or so that Mario Kart was released on Switch. Let's keep the comparisons relevant here - Nintendo are releasing considerably older past generation games, single games, at full retail price, something I am not aware is being done on any scale by another company.

Yeah, this is basically it. Nintendo view their software as the cream of the crop, and they're basically giving you the privilege of buying it from them. I think they're more or less gunning for all they can get on account of the Wii U being a massive flop, meaning they still feel there's plenty of people it will be new to to warrant selling it at full price. Not that I personally value these ports at full price, mind.

It's 4 years old. It's not a game that's just come out, they haven't had to put a lot of effort in creating a game from scratch, so yeah, I don't expect to pay full price. Especially considering fans paid full price first time round. Nobody else does this with their ports/remasters except Nintendo (coincidentally, just got Shenmue I + II for 22 quid). Either Nintendo are sagelike visionaries in their practices or they are ripping people off. I suppose in that case, you wouldn't mind paying 30 quid for each SNES game on the eShop? A SNES game might offer you tens of hours of enjoyment, and be one of the best games ever, so I suppose it would be ok if Nintendo charged you like this? Obviously they don't, but based on the justification you just gave, my example would be true in your case - no? Nintendo charge 4-5 quid or whatever per SNES game because that's what people will put up with, and rightly so. For whatever reason Nintendo aren't listening to the people with these latest ports, or going by standard practice.

Well, because it's an old game. Regardless of whether it looks like it's from this time, it's not. I don't expect to pay full price for a game that hasn't cost Nintendo much to port or update in a minor way, that's just greed. By the same token, there are games being made right now that purposefully adopt NES or SNES-like graphics. That doesn't mean I expect to pay only 3 quid for them like SNES games on an eShop.

But it's all meaningless really, whether the price drops or not later down the line you're still paying full whack if you buy it at launch. It's crazy to think that it's better if the price never drops just so you don't feel insecure that others might get a better deal later on. Dropping prices with time is a proven method to generate more sales after the diehard fans have long since paid full price, so it's an arrangement that benefits the developers too. I would argue it's not worth the price tag it originally released at, on account of it being an old game that pretty much looks the same as when it originally released. Indeed, it looks like a game that could release on Switch now but that says more about the modest graphical leap Nintendo took with the Switch rather than anything positive about what you're getting.

Nearly everyone charges less for recycled/ported/remastered games and it's not hard to see why. They haven't made the game from scratch the second time round so it costs just a fraction of the original game development to put it out on Switch. If it's costing them a lot less money, it makes sense that some of this saving should be passed onto the consumer. There is also the fact it's essentially an old game, and people expect prices to go down (as they should). If you look at any eshop prices for old generation games it's almost always cheaper than it cost back when it launched.