Nintendo Switch Online’s Switch 2 Upgrade Comes With One Big Downside

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home April 4, 2025 26 Views 6 Min Read
Nintendo Switch Online's Switch 2 Upgrade Comes With One Big Downside



There are a lot of reasons to be excited about the Nintendo Switch 2. The successor to the wildly popular and influential Nintendo Switch is shaping up to be a great improvement, both in terms of power and new features, not to mention the slew of third-and first-party titles coming to the system, including a new 3D Donkey Kong and an exclusive multiplayer game by FromSoftware.

But things aren’t all sunshine and roses for the Switch 2. At this point, the Nintendo Switch 2‘s biggest problem appears to be that it doesn’t seem to go far enough to address the criticisms of its predecessor. There are some bizarre left-field choices, like the premium pricing of Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour and higher prices for first-party games, which have left a lot of players scratching their heads. While these oddities are certainly worth discussing, one of the biggest downsides of the Switch 2 might actually come as a side effect of something that’s been touted and received as mostly positive: Nintendo Switch Online’s new GameCube catalog.

One Nintendo Switch 2 Decision is About to Reignite a Big Controversy

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One Nintendo Switch 2 Decision is About to Reignite a Big Controversy

The Nintendo Switch 2 is promising some exciting upgrades, but one change with some of its physical games is already divisive.

NSO’s New GameCube Games Seemingly Block Much-Requested Remasters

Nintendo unveiled its plans to add GameCube games to the premium tier of Nintendo Switch Online, which many seem to be happy about. After all, there are countless masterpieces from the GameCube era that are still unplayable on the Switch, and this tier of NSO is launching with The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker—one of the most highly requested GameCube ports.

And therein lies the problem. By locking these games to a subscription service rather than releasing them as remasters, or even just re-releases that players can buy, their accessibility is actually undermined. It now seems incredibly unlikely that games such as Wind Waker will be properly released for the Switch 2, since Nintendo can now charge a recurring fee for access to them, rather than a one-time charge. As with many things in the games industry, profit motive is driving this new GameCube tier of NSO, not games preservation or audience desires.

It would be one thing if Nintendo Switch Online functioned like Game Pass or PlayStation Plus, allowing players to pay a subscription fee for games that could otherwise be purchased permanently and independently. These titles are solely available through Nintendo Switch Online, limiting consumer choice and ultimately dealing a blow to games preservation.

It can be argued that Nintendo’s decisions with NSO’s game catalog are actually undermining its efforts to curtail illegal torrenting and third-party emulation of its games, as a more convenient and consumer-friendly way of delivering these classic titles would make these alternatives seem less appealing.

Nintendo Switch Online’s GameCube Catalog Is a Step Backward

Part of why Nintendo’s strategy with Nintendo Switch Online stings so much is the way it contrasts the company’s earlier steps toward game accessibility. On the Nintendo Wii, for instance, players could purchase a wide array of SNES, NES, and N64 games via Virtual Console, and often for fairly low prices. This is to say nothing of the various enhanced versions of these older games, like the HD editions of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess on the Wii U, or the graphically updated 3DS releases of Ocarina of Time and Majora‘s Mask.

Before the Switch, Nintendo seemed to take a far more liberal approach to preserving its games. It wasn’t giving these classic titles away for free, of course, but the one-time purchase agreement was much more fair, either due to low pricing or upgrades over the originals. For better or worse, there are likely countless players who would pay full price for an HD version of Wind Waker that they could actually own. Now, it seems that this sort of release will never happen.

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