The Nintendo Switch Online service isn"t set to launch until September, but Amazon already has 3- and 12-months subscriptions up for pre-order on its website, as has been spotted by Twitter user Wario64. Though Nintendo previously detailed that there would be a single-month subscription option, as well as a family membership, those don"t seem to be available yet.
It"s not entirely clear why Amazon has put these up for pre-order as Nintendo hasn"t provided any new details for the service in a while, and it isn"t offering the memberships themselves. On top of that, being a digital product, there doesn"t seem to be too much benefit users could get from pre-ordering it.
Most importantly, it"s hard to understand why the subscriptions are being sold given that a lot of information about the Nintendo Switch Online service has yet to be clarified. Even with some of the additional details provided back in May, there are still a lot of questions up in the air. For instance, the company still hasn"t given any details as to whether or not users will be able to back up their save data to the cloud.
The online subscription service was announced alongside the Nintendo Switch itself and it was initially planned to launch in the fall of 2017, but it"s now slated for release this September, almost a year later. The Switch Online app for smartphones still only works with Splatoon 2, and even as we"re just two months away from the expected launch, it"s still unclear if that will be the only officially supported way to use features such as voice chat. Hopefully, Nintendo will make all of these things clear prior to the launch.
If for some reason, you"re interested in pre-purchasing your subscriptions for the Nintendo Switch Online services, you can get the 3-month subscription here for $7.99 or the 12-month pass for $19.99 here. The website indicates a planned availability date of December 31, but that"s likely a placeholder date since, as mentioned above, Nintendo is expected to launch the service sometime in September.
via: Wario64 (Twitter)