• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

Nintendo is discontinuing Online Lounges, their only real attempt at making a decent online system

Atheerios

Atheerios

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,097


Nintendo has announced they are removing support for Online Lounges for Splatoon 2, the only game that actually supported the feature, and thus basically completly killing all the promises they made when introducing Nintendo Switch online as a paid service back in 2017.

join_2.jpg


The idea of the online lounges was actually pretty cool. You could create lobbies on games and then on your smartphone get an URL for other players to join that lobby, so you could share it on Discord, or even with followers on Twitter, so they could join your game instantly.

As of now, only one single first-party game supports native online invites, a feature that was introduced in 2019; Super Mario Party. All other Nintendo games lack a way to invite players to a match.
 
ZeroDS

ZeroDS

The Fallen
Oct 29, 2017
3,418
Assuming something new is coming or they've just said fuck it and given up
 
scare_crow

scare_crow

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,305
"You could create lobbies on games and then on your smartphone get an URL for other players to join that lobby, so you could share it on Discord, or even with followers on Twitter, so they could join your game instantly."

What an easy and seamless process!
 
RecRoulette

RecRoulette

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,044
I really hope they're just killing this because SplatNet 3 is going to be its own app
 
Pop-O-Matic

Pop-O-Matic

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
12,861
Nintendo is discontinuing Online Lounges, their only real attempt at making a decent online system
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Atheerios said:
You could create lobbies on games and then on your smartphone get an URL for other players to join that lobby, so you could share it on Discord, or even with followers on Twitter, so they could join your game instantly.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This feels like a massive contradiction.
 
Last edited:
m4st4

m4st4

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
5,505
I just got another year of this bullshit so I could play Super Metroid on SNES emulator.

fml
 
vixolus

vixolus

Prophet of Truth
Member
Sep 22, 2020
54,276
I'm still not sure why Nintendo doesn't just bake online functionality into the console. Do they offload the voice chat and party functionality to save on OS resources?
 
Machine Law

Machine Law

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,106
vixolus said:
I'm still not sure why Nintendo doesn't just bake online functionality into the console. Do they offload the voice chat and party functionality to save on OS resources?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Probably. They really really wanted to make it ligthweight. Probably in response to one of the main criticisms of the Wii U.
 
CloseTalker

CloseTalker

Member
Oct 25, 2017
30,545
I legit never knew this feature was a thing. I'd have to assume the usage numbers were incredibly low
 
Jahranimo

Jahranimo

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,002
Good riddance. I only open that app to view my stats in Splatapp 2.

If they do make that its own app, then I will delete NSO app from my phone.
 
Pop-O-Matic

Pop-O-Matic

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
12,861
vixolus said:
I'm still not sure why Nintendo doesn't just bake online functionality into the console. Do they offload the voice chat and party functionality to save on OS resources?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
They do it because they're deathly afraid of another fiasco like when predators were using Swapnote to talk to kids. Therefore, they greatly limit the ways people can communicate both in and out of game on their platform to avoid any chance of something like that happening again.
 
JershJopstin

JershJopstin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,332
scare_crow said:
"You could create lobbies on games and then on your smartphone get an URL for other players to join that lobby, so you could share it on Discord, or even with followers on Twitter, so they could join your game instantly."

What an easy and seamless process!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Pop-O-Matic said:
This feels like a massive contradiction.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Y'all are acting like the Switch doesn't have a native in-plaform invite feature

Which is fair, because Nintendo EPD does the same

Anyway, if you can't tell what the point of this was, you could easily invite anyone from a more public setting into your Splatoon match without actually becoming Switch friends first. There's situations where that may come in handy, such as streaming; it's kinda like a single-use friend code.
 
Renna Hazel

Renna Hazel

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,556
This one thing kills all the promises they made? I think you're being a tad dramatic here.

I do hope they replace this with something else, but this was always a poor method for communication.
 
MondoMega

MondoMega

One Winged Slayer
Member
Jan 10, 2018
47,474
Australia
Wouldn't be surprised if Splatoon 3 makes use of the native invite feature in place of this online lobby system. Then again, outside of Mario Party Nintendo have avoided using it entirely and left it to third-party devs.

invite-e1591847876780.jpg
 
Jaq'or

Jaq'or

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Jun 6, 2018
1,522
Crossing my fingers that this means something better is coming with the Switch Pro 🥴
 
JershJopstin

JershJopstin

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,332
Pop-O-Matic said:
???
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As mentioned in the OP, Super Mario Party is the only first party game to use it, which is why I said EPD ignores it. But if you play that game, you can send anyone on your friends list an invite to join your game, and they can just accept from the Switch and it'll boot up the game and take you to the lobby. I've done it myself; Nintendo made the capability, and any developer can implement it.

Why EPD flat-out ignores it, I have no clue.
Kirbivore said:
The invite feature wasn't there from the get go though.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm not really sure what that has to do with what I said. Nintendo's released updates for several of their online games after the 9.0 Switch update.
 
Jintor

Jintor

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,392
remz said:
You would presume it's being replaced with something better for splat 3
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

lol when it comes to nintendo and a reasonable online experience, i wouldn't presume anything really.

that said, this was never a great solution anyway, so whatevs
 
Crayolan

Crayolan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,756
JershJopstin said:
Y'all are acting like the Switch doesn't have a native in-plaform invite feature
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Does it?

MondoMega said:
Wouldn't be surprised if Splatoon 3 makes use of the native invite feature in place of this online lobby system. Then again, outside of Mario Party Nintendo have avoided using it entirely and left it to third-party devs.

invite-e1591847876780.jpg
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Wtf. This exists? But based on what you said I'm guessing it doesn't work for any of the games people would actually want to use it on lol.
 
Kirbivore

Kirbivore

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,925
JershJopstin said:
As mentioned in the OP, Super Mario Party is the only first party game to use it, which is why I said EPD ignores it. But if you play that game, you can send anyone on your friends list an invite to join your game, and they can just accept from the Switch and it'll boot up the game and take you to the lobby. I've done it myself; Nintendo made the capability, and any developer can implement it.

Why EPD flat-out ignores it, I have no clue.

I'm not really sure what that has to do with what I said. Nintendo's released updates for several of their online games after the 9.0 Switch update.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

But not all of them. They would've utilized it more if it was there from the getgo, but it wasn't there from the start, which is why it's so underutilized.
 
DanteSparda504

DanteSparda504

Member
Nov 2, 2017
4,464
Birmingham, AL
Even if this system works well, it's still a dumb feature and there should have been a native invite system from the get go. I'd rather have that than nothing at all, tbh.
 
Mahaveer RaGOATnatan

Mahaveer RaGOATnatan

Member
Jan 18, 2021
1,343
scare_crow said:
"You could create lobbies on games and then on your smartphone get an URL for other players to join that lobby, so you could share it on Discord, or even with followers on Twitter, so they could join your game instantly."

What an easy and seamless process!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So you cant just go see what your friends are playing and join them if theyre in lobby? I used to do that on 360.
 

ArcaneStar_

Member
Sep 14, 2018
547
The fact the OP is trying to spin the end of this horrible system as a negative is kinda funny not gonna lie

It was awful, good riddance.
 
LossAversion

LossAversion

The Merchant of ERA
Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,659
Atheerios said:
The idea of the online lounges was actually pretty cool. You could create lobbies on games and then on your smartphone get an URL for other players to join that lobby, so you could share it on Discord, or even with followers on Twitter, so they could join your game instantly.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Or they could just have a party, message, or invite system working through the console itself so that you don't need to have your phone with you when you want to play with friends. Almost like we solved this in 2005.
 
YasuYone

YasuYone

Member
Feb 17, 2021
376
After the online implementation and changes on Mario Party I hope this means there is a better/improved version coming
 
Edward850

Edward850

Software & Netcode Engineer at Nightdive Studios
Verified
Apr 5, 2019
990
New Zealand
To be frank there's a better concept for this anyway, simple room codes will do it. We have it in Turok2; when you create a game your lobby is assigned a 4 character code, which works across any platform. Put that anywhere and people can join your game simply by typing that code. Sounds complex but if you are already doing cross-platform multiplayer (which you should be) then you just staple that code into whatever scripts handle your lobby management, upload to a redis cache somewhere and you're golden.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.