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
The rational thing to do is to allow binding that key to some other function, but that wouldn’t be miserable for the users so they won’t allow that
It’s the same as with my TV remote there’s 4 buttons reserved for full-screen advertisements for shitty streaming services. At very least those buttons could do nothing when someone accidentally hits it, if rebinding is somehow too fucking difficult
But you can rebind it.
System settings -> Accessibility -> Button mapping.