Switch Online + Expansion Pack feels like a real deal now

digitaltrends.com:

Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack just got a huge power-up. During Wednesday’s Nintendo Direct, the company announced that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe would receive new paid DLC in the form of 48 classic courses. The series of updates will keep the ever-popular racing game alive through 2023, ensuring it’ll stay dominant on Switch software sales charts.

The best news? It’ll be available free of charge to anyone who has an Expansion Pack subscription. No need to spend an additional $25.

That small announcement single-handedly rewrites the narrative for Nintendo’s controversial online service. While the company didn’t offer players a strong reason to sign up originally, the overall value is looking much better with the potential of more complimentary DLCs regularly coming to the service.

When Nintendo first announced its Expansion Pack service, it was met with immediate hostility. That was due to what may turn out to be a case of bad marketing. Nintendo’s initial pitch was that players could get access to Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games with their subscription. As an added bonus, they’d receive Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ Happy Home Paradise DLC, but that was more of a perk than the focus.

For $50 a year, it seemed like a terrible value. The service would only launch with nine Nintendo 64 games. Players didn’t have hope that it would get a ton of updates every month considering the state of the NES and SNES service, and they were right to worry. Nintendo has only added one N64 game a month since the service launched. It didn’t help that the ports weren’t terribly elegant either, with a lack of button remapping options making games like Banjo-Kazooie difficult to play.

At the end of the day, paying to play old games