 Well, we're kicking things a little old school for this video, mostly because I haven't actually gotten ready for today yet, definitely not camera ready. But the interesting thing about not being camera ready is, as I was sitting there figuring out what I'm going to wear today and I don't know, getting my kids off on the bus and stuff, well, some news dropped that I didn't really expect to see so soon. Nintendo is handing out leaflets out at stores in Hong Kong and the leaflets are advertising things like the Nintendo Switch Online service, HETRUS 99, all of that stuff, pretty standard fare. They're not necessarily talking about how you can pick up the Famicon controllers anymore, which I guess that doesn't surprise me, the Famicon, the NES controllers, all of that. I figured those would end up being a limited run thing, they just wouldn't keep those always available to Nintendo Switch Online service people, which again brings in the question what kind of cool exclusive deals we're supposed to get when all the deals are temporary with nothing new on the horizon. That being said, in the tiny fine print at the bottom of the games list they have in the pamphlet, it says this, Famicon games will stop being added to the Nintendo Switch Online service after a certain period of time. Now, obviously we had to have accepted at some point that they weren't going to add any more NES games to the service. This is a given, there's only a finite amount of NES games they have rights to, only a finite amount of third-party companies that want to offer the rights for their games to be on the service, and obviously they weren't going to be able to just add NES games forever. Now, if you actually look at the giant list of games Nintendo published on the NES over the 5, 6, 7 years that they were making games for it, you'll notice that Nintendo is nowhere near close to completing just their own library of NES games on the platform, let alone third-party library of NES games on the platform. So arguably Nintendo has years and years and years of NES games they could keep adding to the platform, especially if they insist on only adding 2-3 new games to the platform per month, which is a very minuscule amount of games in comparison to the total library available on NES, and it's a minuscule amount of games compared to how many NES games they used to add to the library back during the virtual console days on a week-to-week basis, not a monthly basis, but I digress, that's a criticism we've had of the service for a while. We also know, or at least presume, I mean we had to presume at this point, that Super Nintendo games are going to be coming to the Nintendo Switch online service eventually. We all know about the data mining that showed off what might be the launch games or something for it that we found inside the NES online app, but that being said, nothing's actually been announced. And it's interesting that we are, I mean what are we now, 5 months, 6 months into this online service, and we still don't really know when we're getting more than NES, but now we know that NES is eventually going to come to an end. Isn't that interesting? That before we're even aware of what else is going to be added to the online service to their virtual console replacement, they're already talking about it coming to an end. I don't know what the people at Nintendo are thinking. And obviously you could argue this is not news, because we could just subconsciously know that they weren't going to add NES games forever. But to basically in fine print in a pamphlet, this is the only mention of it by the way, it does not say this on their official websites, it does not say this in any emails they have sent out about the online service, this is the only place it's ever been mentioned, are in these pamphlets that Nintendo handed to retailers in Hong Kong. But the fact that in those pamphlets it says that they're going to stop adding NES games before they even announce what else they're going to be adding is a bad look in my part. And I think what the Nintendo Switch Online service doesn't need right now is any more reasons for us as consumers to look at it as a bad look. Now yes, Tetris 99 is a good look for the Nintendo Switch Online service. It was a free game, it's exclusive to the service. I know I might not be the happiest that it's exclusive to the service, but it's a free game that you need the service for. And you could argue that could justify at least one purchase of the Nintendo Switch Online service, plus obviously we know Twitch Prime slash Amazon Prime is partnered right now with Nintendo and offering a full year of the Nintendo Switch Online service for free. So basically you could play Tetris 99 for free for the next year. But still, this is baffling. A lot of us really care about Virtual Console. Now I've gone on record saying that I'm not a big proponent of these retro games. I think it's really neat to kind of dip back into my childhood once in a blue moon, but my general interest level in playing at least NES games in particular is pretty low. I grew up on these games, I played the heck out of them. I don't really have a strong desire to play them again. When the service came out I played dodgeball for a little bit, which you've probably already seen in this video. And that was pretty much it for me. I didn't really feel like playing much of the other games. Now when SNES games do eventually come out, there's probably some that I'd be willing to try if they do come out. Things like my second favorite game of all time in Secret of Mana, if that arrived. If for somehow they got the licensing rights to re-release Turtles in time, I'd probably give that a play again too. But honestly, I don't really care that much about it. I'm more into what's coming out next, right? What's the new games? The Animal Crossing, the Pokemon Sword and Shield, Luigi's Mansion 3. Daemon X Machina, etc. etc. etc. Like I'm more interested in the new games, the new experiences I haven't played before than ones that I grew up spending hundreds and thousands of hours playing. But maybe that's just me. Reality is that I don't think they should be talking about getting rid of NES games or I guess not adding any more NES games before they're ready to talk about what else they're going to be adding. The Nintendo Switch Online service was promised to get better over time, right? They talked about how whatever is happening at launch, we're going to continue to improve the service over time. We are six months into the service and we have yet to really see any improvements. Unless they think those improvements were, I don't know, the NES and Famicom controllers that gave us the privilege to purchase or maybe it was supposed to be Tetris 99, which I do think was a brilliant addition. But again, that's a free piece of software that's not necessarily an improvement to the actual service. They haven't made it so Splatoon 2 and other games can be backed up with their Cloud Save feature. They haven't made it where there's dedicated servers for most of Nintendo's online games. They haven't shown any notable improvements to the Nintendo Switch Online app, which they are the ones that want to push that as a companion to your games that also has voice chat and yet they haven't really improved that either. It's weird because it's like Nintendo launched this service and then they're just not doing anything with it. And now the one thing they do do, which is add NES games granted at a snail's pace to the service, they're already talking about that coming to an end. This is the disconnect I think Nintendo has with their fans and with just online services in general. We all know that Nintendo has not always understood online gaming at the same level as their contemporaries. And that's because Nintendo was late to the party when it came to online features and all that jazz. Even though Nintendo was one of the first companies to have like virtual console style library or like an e-shop for indie games and stuff like that, they were like one of the market leaders at one point back in the wee days for that. But obviously Nintendo's contemporaries who are already much better with online services in general quickly caught up and even surpassed Nintendo in many ways when it comes to especially today. I mean if we wanted to talk about PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, it is much easier to play their back catalog of games on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 1, Xbox 360 and the original Xbox on those other platforms, both natively in the case of Xbox, where Xbox One you can literally put in an OG Xbox disc and play that game on Xbox One to just having them available through different services and different packages. Whereas Nintendo offers a service that has a very limited selection in 2019 and now they're talking about not releasing any more of that selection at some point in the future. Now obviously when you talk about after a certain period of time, that certain period of time could be five years from now, it could be six years, it could be 10 years. But if it's so far off, why even mention it now? Because it's so far off that you're not really falsely advertising because this is an advertisement, a 2019 pamphlet. Like why even talk about it if you're not going to end it this year? So again, I'm not saying that Nintendo is going to stop adding NES games anytime soon, but it's very clear that they know they're not going to add them forever and now they're telling people that before they're willing to tell us what else they're going to add. Guys, I love the Nintendo Switch. I know, I feel like every time I'm this critical of something Nintendo is doing that I need to remind everyone of that because I know a lot of people run to the comments and they start tapping away that I'm a hater and I'm too critical and this is like, I love the Switch man. Oh my gosh, I think I've been talking positively about the Switch for quite some time and then the only time I've even mentioned criticism is when we talked about the potential for the Switch Pro the other day. Like, okay, maybe the Switch Pro is this, X, Y, and Z, because these are the flaws that exist with the current Switch and have been there since day one. Like, besides that, I've been mostly talking about how there's an amazing library of games coming, how the Nintendo Directs have been really, really good, the NINDI Showcase was really damn good, you know, Cadence of Hyrule and Link's Awakening and all this crazy stuff is happening that has just got my mind just, like, all in a tizzy for the rest of this year. We're going to E3 this year as a company because we believe in what Nintendo is doing and we want to be there to go hands-on with these games and try to bring our experiences to you guys, our opinions, our impressions, our gameplay and everything we can because there's just so much going on with Switch that is massively in the positive. But on the other side of the coin, you may have to remember that Nintendo is still so far behind in what an online service should be. Because remember, most people, most consumers of video games don't actually enjoy having to pay for online services to play games online. When it comes to the bare premise of give us money to play a game you paid for online, a lot of console owners just accept it because that's the way it is but it doesn't mean that we actually like it. And PC gamers often laugh at us for just accepting paywalls basically to use our own internet for peer-to-peer gaming. Like, it's kind of mind-boggling when you think about the fact that we're just paying to use our own internet connection with these peer-to-peer games. We're not even paying to use Nintendo servers or paying to use our own internet connection. And I admit it is a mind-boggling thing that just consoles just keep getting away with. Sony and Microsoft try to justify the price by saying, look, yeah, I mean, it is kind of crappy that we charge you and paywall you for peer-to-peer multiplayer. But we are offering you a bunch of these services, XYZ, ABC, whatever, because we're trying to make it feel like a better value for you. Whereas Nintendo is like, hey, look, we're charging you to play online. We're not charging you much. But we want to make it a value as well. And our value to you is to offer you these NES games that now we're telling you we're not sure if we're going to keep adding to it or actually we know we're eventually going to stop keep adding to it and forget telling you that we're going to add more before we tell you that we're going to stop adding these because why be transparent? And I think that is the interesting thing here because this is a little bit of transparency, right? You can't say that them telling us that they're eventually going to stop releasing new NES games on the service isn't them being transparent. That is them being transparent. That's them being very transparent. The problem with this form of transparency is you shouldn't really be talking about this until you have something else to announce for the system. Like if you want to say, if you want to just come out and say, hey, look at some point in 2019, later this year, be ready. We're going to be bringing a bunch of, we're going to bring SNES games to the online service. And here's like three games we can guarantee are going to be there. They can easily find three games they can guarantee are going to be there at launch. And just say, hey, and just so you know, we're not going to add NES games forever to the platform, but this is our plan moving forward. Now they're not going to tell us any of that, right? And I'm not even saying that they have to or that I should be entitled enough as to expect them to. But what I do expect them to do is offer a competent service. And while I do have a video in the works that shows that maybe possibly the actual online gameplay isn't as bad as we thought, or heck, maybe it is as bad as we thought. I'm still in the middle of testing. Beyond the actual act of playing games online, the rest of the service does not feel good right now. Anyways, you guys let me know what you think about this decision by Nintendo to put this in a pamphlet in Hong Kong in the comments below. Do you think that maybe they thought this would fly under the radar and they did it for legal reasons? I'm not really sure. You guys let me know what you think. And if you liked this video, be sure to drop a like on it. Subscribe for more content. Be sure to enter our Nintendo Switch Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Bundle giveaway through the Gleam.io link down in the description. As a reminder, we will announce the winner of that giveaway when we hit 50,000 subscribers, which we are well on our way. 46K is on the horizon. I want to thank you for choosing to watch this video right here at Nintendo Prime. And I'll catch you in the next one.