Switch Online could offer N64 and GameCube games, says president
posted Friday Jun 28, 2019 by Scott Ertz
When Nintendo released Switch Online, the company's online gaming service, one of the big draws was its included games. The company announced that, like Xbox Live and PlayStation Plus, Switch Online would come with games every month. Playing into the brand's long gaming history, the included games were announced to be Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games, titles from the company's original home console.
With the release of the SNES Classic console, it was expected that Switch Online would eventually begin offering games from later consoles - especially the SNES. Those expectations were confirmed this week, as Shuntaro Furukawa, president of Nintendo, said in response to a question about future retro hardware to go with the NES Classic and SNES Classic,
At this place we cannot tell new information about future classic hardware among others, but we are thinking about providing an extension of the online service which is currently providing Famicom (NES) software, as well as other methods of providing them.
This would be a popular move for Nintendo. While the original NES games are popular, expanding the catalog to include SNES, N64, and GameCube games would help appeal to a wider range of gamers. For some of us, we grew up on NES games, and are happy to revisit them on the go. For others, however, their introduction to gaming happened on later consoles. Bringing games from those consoles to Switch Online would allow younger gamers to experience the nostalgia that my generation has already had the opportunity for.
This is not the first time we have had evidence of slightly newer games coming to Switch Online. In January, a report suggested that 22 SNES titles were found within the service's listings, but were not currently available to the public. This leak would suggest that Nintendo has been planning this move for a while, and could even be close to releasing some SNES titles to the console.
Would SNES titles bring extra value to Switch Online for you? Let us know in the comments.