Nintendo says Switch Online now has 26 million paid members

‘Membership numbers have grown alongside hardware sales at a steady pace’

Today during a semi-enlightening corporate management policy briefing from Nintendo, we got an updated figure for Switch Online membership: 26 million “+” paid members.

Nintendo says that subscriptions “continue to rise,” and that they have reached that figure thanks to the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The numbers originally started to jump after Smash Ultimate, followed by a surge with Pokemon Sword and Shield, then New Horizons. It’s very clear that Nintendo intends on tethering more functionality to first-party games in the future.

The publisher states that “going forward, [they] want to further contribute to consumer satisfaction while ensuring the long-term vitality of [their] platform with attractive titles that “enrich the Switch Online service.” If you recall, they were around 9.8 million in April of 2019, then 15 million in January of 2020. Of course, Nintendo isn’t actually breaking down how many people in that figure are lumped in with the family plan: which could count up to eight members per family subscription.

I really hope that “consumer satisfaction” bit doesn’t actually involve carving out more previously free features for the paid service; and actually translates to a more stable online infrastructure. The negatives so far have outweighed the benefits, especially if Nintendo isn’t going to steadily give subscribers free games anymore (or new games, for that matter).

Corporate Management Policy Briefing [Nintendo]