Nintendo: Fix your online gaming service!

Steve Bogda from damnlag writes:

I love playing games online. I love playing Nintendo games. Playing Nintendo games online is the physical equivalent of slicing your forehead open and smashing it with a salt-lathered spatula.

Besides the fact that it’s indeed Wi-Fi, there is absolutely nothing to like about Nintendo’s Wi-Fi Connection service. Nada. Zlitch. Black hole. There is no bright side of things when dealing with such a barebones, disabled service. It’s like trying to find positive aspects of a baseball player with no limbs.

The Big N utilizes a system that every Nintendo fan is painfully aware of: friend codes. Rather than being able to virtually represent yourself with a username, you are give a generic Mii and a sterile twelve digit code. When I was first given my friend code, I wondered if a clone trooper helmet was going to arrive in the mail a few days later. To boot, all of your gaming peers are veiled in anonymity. Being anonymous is fantastic for posting nude pictures of yourself on 4Chan, but when it comes to online gaming, you’d like your fellow gamers to know at least a tad about yourself.

Nintendo has always preached that they offer a “family friendly” and “safe” medium of online play that their competitors don’t offer. Nintendo is more than just conscious of the millions of children that flock to their parents’ wallets; they have designed their online system around this demographic. Nintendo believes that by appealing to children and their parents on the online front, that they’ll make up for any losses garnered by alienating the hardcore crowd.

FOUR EASY STEPS TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN:
Step 1: End Friend Codes
Step 2: Voice Chat that actually f***ing works
Step 3: Profiles
Step 4: Release updates for old games to match the new system

[Read More]



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  • Mack2D2

    wishful thinking… Nintendo blew it big time in regards to online play… personally I barely even play my Wii anymore because of the lack of online play. I play a game once and never touch it again… Metroid Prime for example, it was one of the best first person shooter/adventure experiences I've ever had from a console game… but once I beat it, there was little reason to go back to it. Incorporate some online play (such as in Metroid Prime Hunters on DS) and the replay value would go through the roof. Sure they have some games that are incredibly fun with online play (Mario Kart comes to mind) but the absolute lack of communication while online takes away from the experience on a massive level, combine the absence of any true form of communication with the minimalist stat tracking systems in place for Nintendo's online games and it becomes horribly clear that xbox and playstation are leaps and bounds ahead of the Big N.

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  • justin

    my online doesnt work for call of duty reflex for wii does anyone know how to fix this

  • justin

    HOW DO YOU FIX YOUR WII SO YOU CAN PLAY ONLINE FOR CALL OF DUTY REFLEX?