Nintendo Confirms You’ll Have To Pay To Press The C Button

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home April 8, 2025 39 Views 4 Min Read
Nintendo Confirms You'll Have To Pay To Press The C Button



Summary

  • Nintendo has confirmed that you’ll need to have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription if you want to use the Switch 2’s C button and open Game Chat.
  • Without the subscription, the button is essentially useless, and will only let you “find out about the NSO subscription” there.
  • When asked why Nintendo is charging for the feature, it says that Game Chat and Nintendo Switch Online are “part of the overall platform experience”.

Nintendo Switch 2’s big reveal has been a bit of a disaster so far, with the conversation surrounding the system all about how pricey it is, how expensive the games are, and why the heck Nintendo Switch 2: Welcome Tour costs actual money, despite not being a game and when Astro’s Playroom came free with every PS5.

Switch 2 player pointing at the screen while holding a Pro controller.

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It seems like Nintendo can’t do anything right with the Switch 2 at the moment, and now it’s very proud Game Chat feature is in the spotlight. Nintendo gave us a basic demonstration of Game Chat during the big Direct, revealing that it kinds almost exactly like Discord, allowing you to chat with your friends and stream your games to them directly.

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.

Nintendo Confirms You’ll Have To Pay To Press The C Button

Nintendo Switch 2 Camera Peripheral

That means that when March 31 rolls around next year, there will be a button on your Joy-Cons that is functionally useless, unless you’re willing to pay for a subscription. Say what you want about PlayStation and Xbox – at least I can push all the buttons on my controllers without having to pay an additional fee.

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.

When asked exactly why Nintendo is asking users to cough up cash for a paid version of Discord, Trinen explains it’s because Game Chat itself is “part of the overall platform experience”, and that Nintendo Switch Online is also “a critical piece of the Nintendo Switch 2 experience.” Hey, at least we’re getting GameCube games at the same time, right?

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