 So, a while ago, Nintendo Switch updated to 9.0 in the operating system and the UI. And for the most part, people didn't really see a ton of differences in this 9.0 update. Maybe things might be a little bit faster, a few more avatars and stuff like that. But we've been waiting a long time, I mean, let's just be honest, we've been waiting, three years almost at this point, for an actual new feature to be added to the UI. A lot of us have been begging for things like folders and all that. And they did technically do one new feature a while ago. They let us organize our games a bit better, being able to custom organize or list by time play or all that stuff. And that was a nice little addition, not exactly folders, but it's something. However, they did introduce something they talked about, but we haven't seen. And Nintendo said that in Switch's 9.0 update that friend invites would be a thing in online play. But the thing is, is friend invites haven't been available in any of Nintendo's offerings or any third party offerings. That is until now. And that is with Divinity Original Sin 2 on Switch. Now, when you go online, you can host a match and invite friends natively through your Switch to come play with you instead of having to go through the game itself, right? We've seen like in Fortnite, you know, you can invite your friends to play with you through the game. But here, this is actually happening on the operating system level. So your friend could be playing a different game. It could be doing whatever could just be online, you know, reading the news section or something. But as long as they're logged in online and you see them, you can select them. And if they have that game, invite them to play. Now, again, this is only working in Divinity Original Sin 2. But it's very interesting. And what you're seeing on screen right now is GameXplain actually testing this out because I don't own that game or a Switch at the moment to test it out myself. But it's very interesting to see this because this is a very basic feature. This is a feature that has existed on Xbox and PlayStation for over a decade. And it's weird that only just now is Nintendo adding this in. Nintendo has, I think, in Switch, a very basic UI, a very clean UI, a very simple operating system that I really like. It's not overly complicated. You're not bombarded with ads all the time. You know, when you go on to do an Xbox, it can be confusing at times. If you've never used an Xbox One or even if you use it at launch and then you're using it today, it can be really confusing using that system. Or if you go on, you know, a Sony's platform on PlayStation 4, some of you might be wondering why the heck does it look like a DVD menu? Because that's just what Sony's been doing because they used, you know, they make DVD players and Blu-ray players. So the menu system inside PlayStation might be familiar to you after all these years, but it's also it's also kind of weird. It doesn't feel intuitive. It's just there. You just kind of accept that. Well, if you've ever used the DVD player or Blu-ray player, you're going to know how to use a PlayStation. But it doesn't feel like a gaming machine. It doesn't feel like a smartphone. It doesn't feel intuitive. And that's the thing about Nintendo Switch is it feels more intuitive not just because it's a tablet and with a touchscreen, but just because it it just feels like apps and games. It feels familiar to us in a smart world, but it doesn't have all of the smart features. And that includes the ability to play with friends easily, natively through the platform. I mean, there still isn't even a voice chat. Like, yes, there's voice chat through the app, but we can't like make lobbies in voice chat and actually talk to our friends in and if you guys remember actually this invite feature, what's really weird about this is back when they first talked about the Nintendo Switch online system and Nintendo Switch online app. One of the main features in the online app, this was the big thing that was going to make it stand out compared to Xbox and PlayStation was that you were going to be able to set up play sessions without even having your Switch with you. You could go on to the Nintendo Switch online app on your phone and you can be like, hey, we're going to do a play date for Mario Kart 8 tonight. Invite all your friends. They could say they're going to attend and then you would assume naturally when you go on to the actual switch around that time, you could send out those invites or the invites would automatically be sent out based on the Nintendo Switch online app. And this is a feature just never came. Nintendo talked about it a couple times really early on in 2017 and then never talked about it again and they still haven't talked about it again and no one seems to be willing to ask Nintendo in interviews about the online system where it went, right? It just poof, vanished as even a concept and that's sad and it feels like friend invites in general vanished with it. Now it's nice to see friend invites coming in. It's interesting that it has to be enabled on an individual game level. So it's obviously up to the developers of each individual game including Nintendo to include friend invites and it is nice that it can be done. It's just such a basic feature that it feels weird that we had to wait three years for such a basic feature and it also kind of highlights just how far behind Nintendo really is with their online systems. I mean they touted obviously not too long ago about all the SNES games coming to Switch and that's great. It's nice to have the huge influx of games but you know what happened after they did that? They stopped with their monthly releases of games. If you guys remember we were getting two, usually just two sometimes three new games added every single month to the NES online app and as soon as they launched the SNES one that just stopped. They stopped giving us new games every month. I don't know if you guys paid any attention to that. Nintendo's not releasing more games. I mean I'm sure they will eventually but they haven't yet and that's so confusing because Nintendo promised there would be new games every month. They literally said when the Nintendo Switch Online service launched there would be new games every month and here we are and we're not getting new games anymore and this is confusing when you see things like Xbox when you see things like PlayStation offering new games every month and not just old games. They're offering sometimes games that are only six months old. They're just giving them to you for being part of Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. So it's just it's baffling to see Nintendo just falling so far behind on the online curve and I know if you've paid attention to Nintendo online services over the years you know they've always been behind the curve but it feels like it feels weird to switch itself as a hybrid system as this thing that seems ahead of the curve really in terms of the evolution of playing in front of your TV and on the go digital downloads. I know there's no game streaming services on it yet but that could be something that could exist in the future because it does exist already on the Nvidia Shield TV consoles that use the same you know internal parts. So it's not an impossibility for that to come to switch at some point and Nintendo just feels like they're really well set up for almost a future proof like system because there's nobody doing what they do and there's nothing coming out that really replaces what they do beyond phones and tablets that have already exist in the market Nintendo competes in. So it's baffling to me to see them so far behind on so many things. So while this is actually a really good moment for Nintendo to add in these friend invites even if it's really only available in this one obscure game that I don't think very many people are even playing anymore on Switch. By the way, Divinity Original Sin 2 is a fantastic game. So this is not a knock on the game. The game is amazing. It's just it's one of those situations where this isn't really where you would expect to first see this feature like why isn't it in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at this point? Why isn't it in Swatune? Why isn't it in any number of games? And I understand some of these games. And Swatune, as an example, has an ability to invite friends within the game. But why isn't an available system level is is beyond me and I'm just I'm left. I'm just left at a loss for words on Nintendo's kind of lack of tech savvy when it comes to online systems. And it's weird too because they're a Japanese company and Japanese is always kind of ahead of the curve. You know, Japan in general is ahead of the curve with tech ahead of the curve. A lot of times with online, they have like the one of the best internet infrastructures in the world in Japan. Everyone over there, you know, can basically be rocking gigabyte speeds if they want. Whereas here in the United States, we have caps and data limits and all the stuff. I know there's fiber in some areas, but not everywhere. That's not a problem in Japan. And there's free internet everywhere too. That's really good. So like Japan's always ahead of the curve, but Nintendo just doesn't seem to care about these online systems as much. They don't care about even like the best user experience. Like the fact that we're this far in and we don't have folders, the fact that we're this far in and we're just asking for Nintendo for bare bones, basic features they've actually had on prior systems. They had native voice chat on Wii U. They had an online social network, I guess in Miiverse that some people really, really missed that baffles that it's gone because there's not really anything like that on Switch and beyond. Oh, you could share a screenshot on Twitter or something like, okay, but where can I talk to my friends? You can't message your friends. You can't do it on the online app. You can't do it here. At least at least on Wii U and 3DS, you could kind of do it through Miiverse. Heck, if you guys remember back to the D, remember Pictochat? Remember Pictochat? It wasn't ideal, but you could message and draw pictures to your friends. That kind of seemed to be the original basis for Miiverse if we're being honest. It was Pictochat and they were doing that all the way back on the Nintendo DS. But here we are in 2019, almost 2020 on Switch and we still can't have any way to talk to our friends. So even if you want to invite your friends to play a game, you can't talk to them before you send the invite to see if they even want to play the game. It's just a baffling thing. I know we have a billion ways to communicate. You know, with Nintendo Prime, we got Discord and everything. Obviously, you can text people, Facebook Messenger, whatever service you want to use. You can just call people up. And I understand that for those people that you might be good friends with in real life, that's a distinct possibility. But there's a lot of people, especially like school age kids, that don't have their friends' phone numbers and might not have cell phones yet. I know I haven't let even my eight-year-old have a cell phone yet. Or for her, it'd be easier if she could just message someone on her Switch. You know, hey, would your Switch friend code or whatever, add you on Switch? By the way, friend codes need to go away. I don't know why Nintendo ruttles back. But they could message their friends and be like, hey, you want to play Splatoon with me? You want to play Mario Kart with me? And then just go. But they can't, my daughter has no ability to do that. She has to actually pick up my phone or the home phone because actually we do have a house phone here. And I call her friend to try to set that up. And I know that that seems like such a foreign concept. But, and I had to do that when I was a kid. But I mean, we're at the point that technology should just be expected to communicate. We are so connected in this world though. It doesn't make sense that Switch is so disconnected. And it wasn't always that way because you could talk to me. Heck, you could video chat people on Wii U. Do you guys remember that? I know it wasn't like this big, widely used service but you could video chat people on Wii U. Like this is back when FaceTime was becoming a big thing. You could video chat on Wii U. It was like right there. It wasn't as good, but it was right there. You could do that. What you could do on your smartphone, what you could do right there on your TV with your Wii U. And it was awesome. It wasn't, you know, obviously a really widely used version but heck, you used to be able to control your TV with the Wii U, you had a built-in TV button with a remote control that was smarter than a lot of people's home remote controls. Unless you obviously have one of those like LG or Super High-Tech smart remotes. But I, Nintendo has these ideas, these crazy ideas like the TV remote or the video chat or Miiverse. And every time they seem to hit on something they just get rid of it when the next generation comes around. And it's just, it's baffling to me to see Switch after all these years. And I love Switch. I love the library. I've said I'm not a big fan of the Joy-Con Drift but I like the Joy-Cons themselves when they're not having drifting problems. I like the Pro Controller when I'm not having the grinding stick issue which I've had in the past. But in general, I like the design of the Pro Controller. Very Xbox-like. I'm okay with that. Doesn't bother me. In general, I just really love the Switch and I love the convenience of on the go, on the TV. How easy it is for me to stream for you guys with a portable device that I just take anywhere with me. I like the idea of the Switch Lite. I like everything that's really surrounding the Nintendo Switch beyond a few of those technical issues. But the one thing that is baffling is just how ancient it feels when you go on the Switch and as modern as it might look with the apps and all this, like, they're still just a lot missing. So I'm really happy. They have added the ability for friend invites even if it needs to be programmed into the games and have game updates and all the stuff to make it work. It should have been their day one. And even with this feature included, it's still so far behind because the invites are there but not the ability to communicate with the people you want to invite. So it's kind of like a half measure. Oh, you can invite your friends, but you can't communicate with your friends to invite them. You can actually communicate with them better if you hop on Fortnite, get into a lobby with them, chat with them and be like, hey, you want to go play Mario Kart 8 and then do the, like, that's the crazy thing. It's better if you use like a free game like Fortnite to communicate with your friends on Switch than it is anything else because you can't even get in a lobby to chat with your friends before games are being played on the Nintendo Switch Online app or anywhere else on Switch. It's just, Nintendo takes a lot of steps forward at times, but then when the next generation comes, they just take like these massive leaps backward. You know, Virtual Console has been reset so many times and it doesn't really make sense. We saw, you know, how Microsoft and Sony were able to kind of transition their Virtual Console like services into the next generation pretty successfully and Nintendo just kind of abandons it every single time, making you rebuy the game. Sometimes they'll give them to you at a discount like they did on Wii U, but it's still, it's not like I already own the game. Why do I have to pay for it again? And now if you're going to go this idea of subscription service that you get these games, then why are we consistently getting updates to those games, why are we getting more games? Yeah, you add an online features, but you know what's more important than those online features to these games? Just having a library of these classic games to play in the first place. A big library, an ever-growing library. At this rate, you could basically never expect n64 games or if you do, you'll get 20 or whatever at launch and then that's it, don't expect any more. It'll be worse than an n64 classic would be. I mean, right now you can argue this Nest stuff is worse than the Nest Classic and that just shouldn't be happening in modern, you know, 2019 and I also think maybe, this is my hope anyways, I hope Nintendo's a smart. They should be taking these games, the NES, the Nest ones, and separating them out on their own is their own subscription service in the future. I know that devalues the Nintendo Switch online service, but let's be honest, it's kind of, even with all the additional perks on Microsoft and Sony, if they removed, if they stopped locking online gameplay behind those services, Sony and Microsoft know those services would just, you know, it really lose millions of subscribers. So Nintendo's still gonna be able to force a lot of us into the Nintendo Switch online service anyways, just so we can play Nintendo games online and play third-party games online that we have to pay premium money for. I know that all the free-to-play ones that you can play online without it, but Nintendo's gonna force us to pay for it anyways and that's really why any of us have a Nintendo Switch online service subscription. So just take these classic games, separate them out on their own for those that don't want to get support, you know, paywalling online play, but do want to subscribe for classic games and set that aside as a $5 for service, you know, tend out, and understand, oh, that makes everything more expensive, but it's an option. You can still include it with the Nintendo Switch online service, but if you also have it separate from it, it gives those that don't want to support the idea of paywalling multiplayer to still get access to these games who don't mind a subscription service to play classic games, but you gotta keep updating them. You gotta be like Netflix. You gotta be like Xbox and Sony. You need to keep adding games. You can't just stop. And these are old games. We're not even talking about like having to rework stuff. So in the end, I'm glad that friend invites are here. I'm glad that we are at a point now in Nintendo Switch's life where we're starting to get some very basic features that should have just been there from day one. No, there's not a person in the world that won't convince me that Nintendo Switch, at least operating system-wise, was rushed to launch. It has a good operating system at its core, the base behind it all, but after you get past that core fundamental stuff, Nintendo just didn't really do anything. We still don't have a web browser, even though there's a web browser on the Switch that you can access by messing around with the social media. Like, it has a web browser. Why is it not publicly available when I can browse websites on the dang3ds is just baffling. Why Nintendo hasn't somehow worked on things with Netflix after all these... There's just so many little things. But again, the Nintendo Switch is a fantastic piece of hardware. The Nintendo Switch is a fantastic gaming platform. And for playing games, I'm glad that cartridges are back because they are a better medium than having to install games all the time, even though there are games that require installs because they won't use the bigger cartridges because they're expensive. It's kind of like a catch-22 there. But thank you guys so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed this video, let me know down in the comments below. I got plenty more content coming your way. A whole bunch of videos are already in the works, partially done. I just need to actually sit down for a few days and get all the editing done because there's a lot of crazy content coming. But thank you guys so much for tuning in. Thank you, Nintendo, for adding a basic feature. And thank you, shout-out to GameXplain again for showing this off and allowing us to use their footage. And I will catch you guys in the next video.