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Comment by fasdfasf | Hacker News Reader

>They are consistently 10+ years behind the times in terms of multiplayer and online. That they are still so popular is a credit to how divorced from reality multi national corporate mega giants can be and still succeed

have you considered that you might be the one divorced from reality and the average consumer does not care about this?

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I think you only need to look at things like which games make the most money and which games are most viewed on twitch / youtube etc. Undoubtedly there is still a great market for single player and couch co op games. Nintendo is king here because their copyright moat lets them make the same 4 games every 3 years and we all buy them.

I mean... I don't play a lot of online stuff, but the switch games I've played are pretty terrible. Matchmaking for Tetris 99 takes forever (Mario 99 was slow too). Trying to play Splatoon 2 online with a friend works great if one friend was already playing, then the other friend can queue up to be in their group for the next round. But if two people want to start at the same time, good luck. Especially if one or both are younger children and don't have the patience or perserverance to hit the right buttons every time.

I'm pretty sure forming a group and then finding a match was possible 10+ years ago.

Of course, that doesn't mean the average consumer cares. I'm not even sure I care that much (I'd pay for the online service and play more Tetris 99 if matchmaking was faster though... I don't like sitting around waiting to play, so I do other things instead)

in my experience the tetris matchmaking takes like 30 seconds to start a new match. doesnt feel any noticeably slower than the time between COD matches or something on xbox

their first party titles are pretty bad. Splatoon is anti-fun -- I play 99% of the games I play with my wife and the inability for us to queue up and play on the same team pushed us away from Splatoon 2 which we otherwise loved. The co-op mode was fun, but since it is nintendo, not available every day. Just to reiterate -- the only multiplayer mode where you could guarantee you get to play with your friends was PvE and only enabled some days. Most if not all of their games are like this. Look at the pathetic online community for their greatest and most comprehensive super smash game. That is a dropped ball, there isn't really a second way about it.

> Just to reiterate -- the only multiplayer mode where you could guarantee you get to play with your friends was PvE and only enabled some days.

For the online mode of Salmon Run, yes.

It's been a few years since I touched Splatoon but from what I recall, if you go to the arcade, you can set up a local co-op Salmon Run session anytime. It is/was not well-advertised.

splatoon 2 was so, so sad. just really obviously bad decisions that made playing with friends impossible. Maybe to avoid smurfs / stompers? But at the cost of precluding anyone that likes playing with their friends.

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