Nintendo Switch Online vs Virtual Console

The online service on Switch is rapidly growing, but it’s not quite there yet

Remember Nintendo’s Virtual Console service? Last seen on the Wii U and 3DS consoles, the service boasted more than 500 games. These titles represented classic platforms like Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, TurboGrafx 16, Neo Geo, arcade machines, and plenty more. In fact, it was something of a video game museum, which encompassed pretty much every major home console prior to the GameCube (well, except the PlayStation, Saturn/Dreamcast, and Atari machines). Both the Wii U and 3DS even have Virtual Console ports of Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and DS games.

We all know by now that the Virtual Console service didn’t live on in its existing state beyond Wii U or 3DS. One possible reason (of likely many) for this is that games had to be purchased individually on the Virtual Console — it’s a concept that seems anachronistic in an age where streaming and “all you can watch/listen to/play” subscription services are the norm. Virtual Console has been replaced by the slowly-growing Nintendo Switch Online (NS) service, which now consists of 82 games — definitely nothing to sneeze at.

If you’re unfamiliar with the service, you can think of NSO as essentially being Nintendo’s Xbox Live service. An NSO…