A video of Nintendo's online services breaking during an official Smash Bros tournament has fans annoyed about the current state of the service.
The first set for the NintendoVS Fall Open tournament was live yesterday, with competitors playing Smash Bros against one another. Although a Smash tournament is usually a reason for celebration, some fans have come away from it with some concerns.
A video on the Nintendo subreddit is currently gaining traction and comments from concerned Nintendo fans, who argue that it points out some of the issues with service. The video shows a match in Smash Ultimate between ToonFink and Aarow, who are a minute into the match, with Aarow haven taken over 90% damage.
Halfway through the video, the screen completely freezes and the Smash Bros logo can be seen flashing in the bottom right corner. This is a familiar sight for many a Smash player and indicates that the match has frozen. The match then completely stops, saying, "The arena has closed". The presenters for the event then laughs it off by saying that these things happen during online play and that we've all had it happen to us.
Both of the fighters seem okay with the interruption too, taking it in their stride. This isn't a reaction shared by Nintendo fans, who have been complaining about the state of Switch's online services since the console launched, specifically when it comes to Smash Bros. According to the comments, the servers actually broke down again during the livestream, so it's not just an isolated incident.
The comments underneath the Reddit video are full of responses like, "imagine having this happen twice on your official stream and you still decide to do nothing about online", and "Wym they raising the price". It's especially bitter after the recent price increase for the Expansion Pack.
To be fair to Nintendo, these sorts of things do happen, but there are also other platform fighters out there with rollback netcode and dedicated servers, so fans argue that it can surely be done for Nintendo's biggest series.