- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion
- aboringdystopia
- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion
- aboringdystopia
Nintendo is so proud of the feature that it even included a little C button right on your Joy-Con (which was a point of excited speculation before the reveal) so you can jump into Game Chat whenever you like.
Unfortunately, it also tried to bury the fact that this Game Chat feature will actually require a Nintendo Switch Online subscription once the free trial period ends on March 31, 2026.
Now, you may be wondering what the button does if you don’t have a subscription? Thankfully, Nintendo’s vice president of player and product experience, Bill Trinen, was interviewed by Polygon on that very same topic. Trinen explains that the button will let you “find out about the NSO subscription there and get a sense of some of the functionality.” It’s basically a button that asks you to pay up.
It’s basically a button that asks you to pay up
We’ve gotten to the point where button functions are microtransactions…
This is why I emulate games and just use Linux
It’s more just that the controller has a button that is tied to an online subscription only feature. You need to pay for online services for Playstation and Xbox too, but neither have dedicated controller buttons that are tied to any of those features.
But they do have dedicated buttons for share/record/streaming and other social gaming activities. You can’t reassign them either. Social gaming activities is what Nintendo is doing here, essentially. The article makes it seem like “oh no I can’t jump in Mario if I don’t pay a monthly fee”. They’re providing a button shortcut if you want to use their game chat when you’re online gaming. It is useless if you’re not online gaming anyway. There is no issue here. Blame Nintendo for the actually bad things they do, we don’t need to make up problems.
Sure, but those share buttons can be used offline, no subscription required. I just use them for screenshots/short clip capture that I send to my personal devices.
But game chat is a dead button to anyone who doesn’t pay. Like it’s fine to lock the chat feature behind the subscription, I get that. But it’s weird to make a dedicated hardware button for a feature that not everyone can use.
You can remap it to any other button or turn it off entirely. To use your example you could use it as a second capture button if you prefer it on the right controller instead of the left one
You can remap any button on the switch 2 in the settings. Game chat is just the default setting.