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

  • InfiniteGlitch@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    42·
    10 小时前

    Now, you may be wondering what the button does if you don’t have a subscription? 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.

    Was not this already known after the release of Switch 2? I can vaguely remember people complaining that you needed an subscription to use the particular feature and if they did not, the button was just… an useless button.

    This is why I emulate games and just use Linux

    I too emulate Switch 1 games but unfortunately, Switch 2 games cannot be emulated yet.

    • 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish
      7·
      5 小时前

      Nintendo didn’t even try to hide this, it was touted as a bonus during the launch announcement that this feature would be free for everyone to try for a limited time.

      This article is ragebait. There is plenty to call Nintendo out for; “they made a feature that they TOLD US ABOUT” isn’t one of them. Trash article from trash rag.

    • turdas@suppo.fiEnglish
      52·
      10 小时前

      Was not this already known after the release of Switch 2?

      Yes, which is why this article is from 2025. Why OP is posting it now is anyone’s guess.

    • subignition@fedia.io
      21·
      10 小时前

      Was not this already known after the release of Switch 2?

      yes, the “GameChat Welcome Offer” was talked about pretty extensively immediately after the launch.

      Also, in System Settings → Accessibility → Button Mapping, you can literally remap the C button to be any other button on your controller, so calling it a useless button is just plain wrong

      • AvocadoSandwich@eviltoast.orgEnglish
        11·
        10 小时前

        To be fair, it is not gonna be very usefull to remap it to any other button as the other button is also already on your controller. It would just be a duplicate function.

        Not entirely useless, but also not far off. It might eventually become useful as a homebrew menu button if someone ever figures out how to hack it

        • brsrklf@jlai.luEnglish
          5·
          7 小时前

          Now that you mention this, I think I’ll map mine to be a home dup anyway, because the only times I push it is when I confuse it for the other one.

          Maybe there’s an edge case where it would be more useful to map it to something else in split joy-con mode, not sure.

        • subignition@fedia.io
          3·
          10 小时前

          Yeah it’s situational, but based on my experience with the grip buttons on the pro controller, I’m sure there’s some games where it’d come in handy