 While the Nintendo Switch has various online and networking functionalities, Nintendo elected to use a separate mobile app, Nintendo Switch Online, for features such as in-game voice chat, adding friends, and managing of the Switch Online subscription service to access more advanced features.According to Fils-Aimé, they wanted to use a mobile app for these features so that players could take advantage of their existing mobile devices that are already geared for aspects like voice chat, and to eliminate some of the latency problems that players may encounter if they were playing the Switch in its handheld mode.The app was released in July 2017 in some countries.