Poll: How Would You Rate Nintendo's Switch Online Offering In 2026?

Nintendo Switch Online is approaching its ninth year soon (yes), having launched on 18th September 2018 and steadily built a library of games and features spanning both Switch 1 and its successor. Compared to online services on other consoles, an NSO subscription is significantly cheaper and arguably easier to parse, with just two tiers.

While the value proposition was questionable at launch, a combination of regular updates and additions in the years since and price hikes/changes to PlayStation and Xbox's offerings makes Switch Online more attractive than ever these days. But is it good enough?

As a recap for anyone who hasn't kept up, your basic $19.99 / £17.99 a year gets you online play, cloud saves, access to the Nintendo Music app, and 207 (by our count) "Nintendo Classic" games across NES, SNES, Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Nintendo will also let you buy any of the NSO-specific retro controllers they offer, which is nice of them.

Elsewhere, you get the excellent Tetris 99 and F-Zero 99, access to Game Trials, a bunch of Missions and Rewards for completing certain tasks — including the recent DK Challenge — and redeemable icons for your profiles. And Switch 2 owners also get GameChat with the base tier.

Bumping things up to the Expansion Pack tier ($49.99 / £34.99 annually), you get all of the above plus another 136 games across N64, Game Boy Advance, Mega Drive, and Virtual Boy - and another nine GameCube games if you've got a Switch 2.

The higher-tier subscription also makes accessible the DLC for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (the Booster Course Pass), Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Happy Home Paradise), and Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion. Aaand if you're rocking a Switch 2, BOTW and TOTK owners can access the Switch 2 Edition upgrade for free as well.

Whether you pay yearly or at a slightly higher monthly rate, it's not a bad suite of subscription perks. For many, the retro game library will be the biggest draw, and while not every single one of the 350+ games on the highest tier is solid gold, you're getting the vast majority of Nintendo's greatest hits across the included platforms, plus some choice third-party winners. And Urban Champion.

Following criticism of its emulation quality, there have been updates and improvements over time and at this stage most everything is in a playable, presentable state. Don't get me wrong, it won't be enough to satisfy purists who take advantage of the latest, greatest ways to play their retro collections, but it does the job for the most part.

Case in point: I've been playing Ocarina with the kids after recently getting an Analogue 3D, an FPGA-based N64 with 4K output and other mod-cons and trimmings. After going through the Deku Tree opening, I realised we should be playing on NSO so we could take it on an upcoming trip. Blasting through the opening section again on Switch 2 (without the kids this time), it didn't feel terrible, but it was sluggish by comparison. Playing notes on the Ocarina, for instance, really exposed the input lag.

It's the kind of thing you may not notice if you weren't super familiar with a particular game/system, or if you hadn't played both versions in quick succession. For the majority of players, the convenience trumps the drawbacks (even with the lag, I'm not bundling the Analogue 3D in a backpack and hoping the hotel has a decent TV), but purists will rightly insist that you could be having it better elsewhere.

Then again, an Analogue 3D is currently $269.99 plus shipping (and the shipping hurts if you're outside the US) and requires you to bring the games library yourself. NSO is a different proposition, so it's apples and oranges for anyone just looking for easy access to some Nintendo classics.

Another point of contention is the rate at which Nintendo adds games to the service. While the cadence of monthly drops is fair, some systems feel underserved. The nine-strong GameCube library, for example, is still missing two announced games (Mario Sunshine and Pokémon Colosseum) and hasn't had anything new since Pokémon XD in March.

It's also worth noting NSO's losses over the years. To date, one retro game has been delisted (Super Soccer), and Super Mario 35 and PAC-MAN 99 were sadly removed. Also, Game Vouchers — which gave you a discount if you bought two digital first-party games (and some select third-party ones) — were retired before the arrival of Switch 2.

So, coming up on eight full years of NSO, the offering is significantly bulked out, although there have been some stumbles along the way. The most exciting additions for hardcore Nintendo fans are probably the previously unreleased games. The cancelled Star Fox 2 for SNES (which previously debuted on the Super NES Classic Mini Console) was a very welcome addition, but the upcoming D-Hopper and Zero Racer — two Virtual Boy games that never saw the light of day — are particularly exciting.

In fact, while Virtual Boy isn't everyone's cup of tea (and the necessary peripherals are inconvenient as well as pricey), the fact that 14 of the system's minuscule 22-game library are now accessible to millions is just fantastic. I'd personally prefer they get some sort of physical release, too, to prevent access being unceremoniously revoked, but it's great to see a platform holder paying homage and honouring its misses as well as its hits.

What else might Nintendo have squirrelled away in its vaults? With rumours that DS and 3DS are next in line, there's plenty of room to grow. But as things stand, what are your thoughts on Nintendo Switch Online in 2026? Let us know in the polls below.