You can earn Nintendo Switch Sports unlockables without Nintendo Switch Online

Nintendo Switch Sports is, effectively, a party game played with friends. And, 99% of the time, you’ll need a Nintendo Switch Online subscription to play online multiplayer on any game on the Switch. You can play Nintendo Switch Sports , online by yourself, earning progression towards unlockables.

This may sound hair-splitting but it works. You’ll just be competing against very easy CPU competition in “online” single-player modes. But you will earn points that can be put toward unlockables.

We saw it for ourselves earlier today. You can create a guest account if you have Nintendo Switch Online and log in using that. When you tee up a single-player match, you get a screen informing you that you’ll be playing in trial mode.

Image: Nintendo via Polygon

As we found out after a quick — and easy — badminton match, we still picked up points that can go toward rewards. So, if you’re reading that you don’t need a Nintendo Switch Online subscription to play Nintendo Switch Sports, that’s technically correct. And that, as we all know, is the best kind of correct.