[accrual]

I can't imagine a phone being a component. Nintendo has always had a conservative take on communications between users. It's usually filtered or reduced to set of preset phrases or emoji/reactions.

Animal Crossing let you freely chat, but without a keyboard, it's difficult to get more than a couple short words out. Splatoon is a popular multiplayer game that greatly benefits from team communication, but all you have are "booyah!" and "over here!" and a couple other preset means to communicate to your teams.

Miiverse on the Wii U was an exception and let users post text and drawings, but it felt pretty heavily moderated, and was eventually shut down. I do miss it though, it was a great community while it lasted.

Given their target demographic I can't imagine Nintendo would put any effort into allowing general communications through their hardware.

[spondylosaurus]

Not sure if you mentioned "through their hardware" specifically in reference to the Nintendo Switch Online mobile's voice chat capabilities, but man, that's always struck me as a weird/interesting choice.

On one hand, bizarre to silo voice chat into a completely different piece of hardware than the one you're gaming on that already has a microphone built in. On the other hand, it does make sense as a way to keep kiddos off the airwaves, since to use NSO's app you either need to have a phone or (hopefully...) get permission from a parent to use theirs. On the other other hand I'm just glad they've finally enabled any kind of voice chat at all.

[GuB-42]

They are also mostly offline/local-first. Most of their best known games come on cartridges and while they have an online component and may require internet connectivity for updates, the main gameplay is either single player (Mario, Zelda) or local multiplayer (Smash Bros, Mario Kart). Splatoon is more of an exception.

And as for they system, the Switch doesn't even have a web browser (not officially at least).

That internet connectivity is limited is a feature. For parents who want to keep their kids away from the wild web, and for those who want to disconnect or have limited access. Nintendo is the only one in the mainstream doing this.

[14]

This is one of the most lacking features I see with nintendo products. Being able to play with friends is a massive feature other consoles have and I am unsure why nintendo is so against it. Gone are the days where kids sit in the same room on a TV playing games. It is much more common for them to go home after school, grab their headset and start gaming. I do have a couple switches but I don't think I would be grabbing future model without things like text or chat as it is much more fun to get on a PS5 and be playing with several friends at the same time.