@NEStalgia Glad it was not due my utter incompetence on missing the obvious though You know, I don't think this would really bother me if Nintendo Online was a better all-around service than what it currently is. I saw the voucher system and figured, considering that I easily buy 4-6 "$60 Games" on Switch at or around launch, Nintendo Online would not only pay for itself (which it still did with FE 3Houses and Astral Chain), but actually save me money and thus make sense. Plus, I'd get the safety of mind of cloud saving, and maybe the occasional Mario Kart online match (I barely play anything online on the Swtich, hence I was not actually bothered by the paywall as such).

Obviously though, as you say, it adds to the sting that this is not generally a limited offer, but a ... regionally limited offer, which ... yeah, is kinda odd, esp since I don't see what the US is getting instead. I'm EU myself, but due to the (kinda) weak dollar I always have been buying US systems/from US accounts since the WiiU/3DS era (and for those sweet Atlus releases of course in the region-locked days) and while this won't change any of that, I'm once more stuck with the clear feeling that Nintendo Online is currently the weakest part of the whole Switch ecosystem, which is a shame. Looking at something like gamepass, yeah, it's vastly more expenisve, but the value is still worlds and leagues better. Not to mention, that the whole integration of onlineplay and such is all-around superior on Xbox for instance (where you can link profiles and cloud-stored savegames to your controller for christ sakes...).

Then again, Nintendo was never really strong about this whole Online buisness and having a penchant to speak "directly" to the customer, and have a proper feedback-loop between concerns and adressing such concerns. Things improved, I feel, the last couple of years, but there are still wwwaaaayyyyysss to go. I'm frankly still more hung up on the whole messed up voice chat situation, even though I would rarely us it anyways - as things stand I NEVER use it and in turn, am less inclined to spend my online-time budget on the Switch than on PSN or XBOX. But yeah, that is water under the bridge, which nevertheless leaves me baffled as to how it is possible in 2019 for this to still be by large completely unadressed. Just ... yeah, baffling, not sure how else to describe it, despite my 30 years experience with Nintendo pulling stuff like that ... foolish me can still be baffled