Super Mario Maker 2’s paid online mode won’t let you matchmake with friends

• A first for any Super Mario game: online play. This expands upon the local-multiplayer insanity of the New Super Mario Bros. series. [credit: Nintendo ]

Most of the news to come out of a recent Super Mario Maker 2 press event seems to be good, with series fans confirming that the "make your own Mario" series has only gotten bigger and better in its Nintendo Switch premiere. But the event also included confirmation of a strange limitation for the June 28 game: the series' new online-multiplayer modes—which require a paid Nintendo Switch Online membership—will not let players matchmake with friends.

As news reports from the event emerged on Tuesday, one of those (from Nintendo World Report) included a tidbit disclosed by a Nintendo Treehouse staffer about the game's online matchmaking. SMM2 will include both online-versus and online-cooperative modes, and these four-player sessions serve random, community-created platforming levels for players to race through (with a bouncy-physics system akin to New Super Mario Bros. Wii).

However, NWR reported that the Switch game's launch version will not support online matchmaking with friends of your choosing: online players will only be able to dive into a pool of "randoms." As NWR wrote: