Will Nintendo ever embrace the Internet?

[Donkey Punch]

Or maybe I shoud ask, will Nintendo ever make a competent online console?

The GameCube had a 56K Modem Adapter that sold better than the Broadband Adapter. It had 1 online game. Enough said.

The DS online play was... underwhelming, but I gave Nintendo a free pass because it was their first real online system. The system was released in the mid 2000s (and redesigned several times after that), and all DS models still only supported 802.11b, the slowest Wi-Fi protocol.

By the time the Wii came out, it became clear that Nintendo was overly incompetent in designing online infrastructures. Who remembers downloading updates to your Wii menu, like a new version of the Weather Channel? The Mario animations during downloading updates were cute, but they went on forever. It took several minutes to install a tiny file. Downloading a NES Virtual Console game, which is a 50KB ROM at the most with some extra system files also took an extremely long time. Nintendo simply doesn't know how to make online apps, period.

We now finally the 3DS and the Wii U. Both are light years behind the FIRST iteration of Xbox Live that came out in 2001. There is no smoothness to any action that has to do with being online. Launching stuff is always accompanied by delays.

There are no more excuses for Nintendo. Back in the early 2000s, Reggie and Perrin Kaplan made fools of themselves by claiming that people were "not interested" in playing online. Several years later, they started paddling back by taking tiny steps to take their systems online.

Now, Wii U is being slaughtered by every system out there, including phones, tablets, and cheap Android devices with crappy hardware. Will Nintendo ever learn? Does it want to? I love Nintendo games, but I also love technology, and Nintendo's stubbornness in using technology that matters is making the whole experience suffer.

 

[BanjoKazooie]

Have you used the Wii U web browser? It is blazingly fast. But I have to agree, they do need to support online more, we will see if they truly failed once Mario Kart is out. If its online is as laggy and boring as MKWii, than they have failed.

 

[Esperahol]

Question: What kind of internet speeds are you two using? That is something of an issue when people complain of lag and internet failure - if your speeds are incompatible then you really can't expect all that much. Also where exactly are the servers for Nintendo located and are they solely dedicated to this? I wonder if different groups have different experiences with this - UK, Asia, Non-American... I wonder.

 

[Damien Lee]

Well, Nintendo will probably not embrace the internet on the same level as their competitors. Part of the reason is because Nintendo makes consoles and games that are better enjoyed within a family environment. They excel at local mutliplayer games rather than online ones. The doesn't mean that they're ignoring the internet but it will never be the main priority with them.