Nintendo Switch Online Subscriptions Top 26 Million, Plans to Enrich the Service

DualShockers

By Samuel Woods

Published Sep 16, 2020

Animal Crossing, Super Smash Bros. and Pokemon have been the biggest factors for the growth of the service.

Today is yet another busy day for Nintendo fans. Alongside the announcement of a Nintendo Direct Mini Partner Presentation that's happening tomorrow, the company released its Corporate Management Policy Briefing. The briefing, which is aimed at investors, was packed full of details of how Nintendo has performed so far this fiscal year.

One of the key details of the briefing that was how the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service is performing. The service, which launched almost two years ago to the day, is now sitting an impressive 26 million paid members as of this month. With the Switch sitting at around 56 million units sold, the subscription base is now just below 50%.

The online subscription service has seen a huge spike following the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. A paid membership is required to play any of Nintendo's titles online and with the popularity of New Horizons, coupled with the fact a large percentage of the game's social features requiring online play, it's little surprise to see it having such a positive impact on Nintendo's numbers.

As well as granting players access to online play, the service contains access to a library of both NES and SNES titles. The catalogue of games is constantly growing and Nintendo just announced their next batch of arrivals -- these include Donkey Kong Country 2 and Mario's Super Picross.

Within the briefing, Nintendo states that the "consumer base has quickly adopted this service" before explaining what the future holds. They say:

"Going forward, we want to further contribute to consumer satisfactuion while ensuring the long-term vitality of our platform by releasing attractive titles and enriching the Nintendo Switch Online service."

As well as confirming their impressive online subscription numbers, Nintendo also revealed that there are now over 200 million registered Nintendo accounts worldwide, owing a lot to Mario Kart Tour. They also shared that alongside the upcoming Super Mario Movie, they have “multiple other visual content expansion projects,” in the works.