Is this true? What’s your opinion?
The people are the Wii Virtual Console forums, have been discussing the Nintendo Wii’s online gaming abilities and exactly what they think of them.
There has been a lot of discussion on why the new Super Mario Brothers game for the Wii is missing any form of online play. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata had the following to say about Nintendo’s online play offerings.
“I think that his decision on whether or not to include online functionality with New Super Mario Bros. Wii was based on the idea that the true value of that product was going to be determined not by online functionality, but on how compelling and unique the experience would be for two, three or four people to be able to play that game together in the same room … Of course, I have heard commentary that people feel that Nintendo’s online functionality is behind the others or is lacking in some ways.”
Some VC-forums members spoke their opinions on the Nintendo Wii online play, on the forums.
“Well they shouldn’t be satisfied [with their online services] since even the Dreamcast had better online.”
“What Miyamoto is trying to say is that not all games should be based on online play like NSMBW, which based on this game I think is bogus, especially because NSMBW [New Super Mario Brothers Wii] is made on Multiplayer standards.”
“I still don’t see why there was no online in NSMBW other than the fact that I’m sure there would be some lag which is really bad for a platformer. They keep saying they kept it offline so that you could have a more personal experiance with your buddies, which is complete crap. You could have kept that and added online onto it.”
“Does Nintendo really even have an online model? The only thing they really do is sell software via the Wii Shop Channel. Other than that, I don’t think there’s much of a strategy at all. The first thing they could do is get rid of the whole Wii friend code thing in favor of a personalized profile a la XBOX Live (or PSN, or Steam, etc.). The way things are now almost seem as if they want to make playing online as difficult as possible so that you simply won’t do it.”
“At this point in the game, if a game is multiplayer, it should offer online play, end of story (and by the same token, if a game is multiplayer, it should also offer some offline local multiplayer modes…online-only multiplayer kind of sucks). If a game is multiplayer and doesn’t offer anything in the way of online play, then it’s a sign of either laziness or incompetence on the part of the developer (or both).”