Reggie: Wii U's online functionality will be 'flexible' to publishers

@copa , I kno right... Guys, it's Nintendo... Of course online will be terrible...

@Marshillboy
I like to be able to have a universal account for my console. Just think--"final delta saga xiv" online game is released. You make an account there. Cool.

Oh! But look! "Cool Fat Pink Fellow Platformer" is released! It has online capabilities where you can submit and play other's platform levels. There's another account to be made.

Then here comes "Blue Blob's Quest" with multiplayer, pvp, and item trading. Another account. Its like Nintendo doesn't get why gaming handles exist as they do.

But there's a bright side to this affair. It means that companies can have online HOWEVER THEY WANT. Yes, there might be chatting capabilities! Maybe video chat! So there could be good to this.

@The Only Girl
Games of the year.

@Marshillboy That's not entirely true of Steam. EA games still need to authenticate with EA servers, just try launching Dragon Age or Mass Effect 2. Also Games for Windows titles like Fallout 3 or Batman: Arkham Asylum have that additional overhead of dealing with the GFW UI and Steam overlay. It's no so much they force people to do things their way, it's they just layer their stuff on top of whatever other people put out on there.

@Marshillboy
True but this gives me hope that it might actually just have steam on it... especially after what valve has said about the system. ;)

@onan
rockstar,EA,Activision,Sega,Microsoft,Valve,ID,and etc on steam

just to play battlefield i have log into steam,log into ea,then make sure punkbuster is working or get kicked out.
ive been kicked out by punkbuster for having the steam overlay on my call of duty games.
then if the steam version isnt up to date with the retail version thats an issue...
GFWL was easier but had little content

a 11 year old could view porn easier than he could pirate a game
theres more protection for a 7GB file than 50MBs of streaming video

Nintendo: Oh god we are not good with internet

@Crimsic
A cookie to anybody who can guess what game series I reference.

@Marshillboy Lol? Actually steam is successful because it sells games for discount a lot and makes it easy to manage games. MOST steam games do NOT use steam's unified gaming services. Gaming does NOT need unified "friends" and such. Sometimes I just want to play a game with a specific set of people, this is why I enjoy PC gaming and hate steam's unified platform. I turn off messanger systems for this reason as well. I don't need someone going "HEY WANNA PLAY [blah] when I'm playing [Bluh].

@The Only Girl

Kirby and Dragon Quest's Slime?

@Kougeru
Well then I don't know what to tell you cause I love having a unified friends list on Steam and XBL. Sorry that you don't like your friends enough, but that's a personal problem, not a problem with Steam.

I like being able to easily invite my friends to my game and also recieve invites to their games. I like knowing exactly what games my friends have and are playing.

Also, even though you have to authenticate on EA servers or Windows Live, all of Steam's functionality is available at all times by pressing Shift+Tab.

@PSN StaticShock
Nintendo is catching up. I won't be surprised if Nitendo Wii U will support a modem.

@PSN StaticShock
It looks like it'll turn out much worse than ps2's online multiplayer. This is bad news. What happened to you nintendo, all that money and you can't hire people to do this trivial task?

@huffhuffhuff

A modem is nice and all but the real question is, does it support Netscape Navigator?

@The Joy of Painting w Bob Ross

Rather that than the PS3's browser :P

@huffhuffhuff

That's the funny thing.

Nintendo systems all the way back to the NES supported a modem, but with only two exceptions (the third-party SNES XBand modem, and the modem for the GameCube) none of them were released in the US. And the GameCube modem supported a whopping one game.

Hell, even the NES got the Satellaview in Japan, and the 64DD had RandNET for a very limited time.

Hell, even the GAME BOY had a connector to be used with a cellular phone, which never made it to America.

@Ezio Auditore da Firenze

At first I thought this was Elzio, but nope, your Sony boner really is that hard.

@Ezio Auditore da Firenze Well, the chance it may support cross-party chat is still there.

@Ezio Auditore da Firenze

Also, now third-parties can decide if they actually want to adequately secure their customers' information or if they'd rather forfeit six weeks worth of sales instead. Now that's innovation!

@A Sandwich
Yeah, 'cause it's not like every 3rd party with their own online system asks for random customer info to sign up for their own service for no reason, only to have it leaked by Lulzsec-like "hacktivists" (to use that term very loosely), right?

It's cute you're trying to take a cheap-shot at Sony as a retort, but at LEAST make some sense when you do it.

@A Sandwich

I know you were just kidding or whatever but this "flexible functionality" sounds code for "If the online experience for your favorite WiiU game sucks it's not our fault."

Sony kind of has an in between approach but we saw developer integration of features that weren't required like trophies (before mandated they were implemented sparingly) and current features that are hit or miss like custom soundtracks, party chat / system etc ... if left up to the developers they won't put additional features 90% of the time because it adds to development time and (big kicker) aren't required to be implemented. There are very few instances in which developers have parity with PS3 & 360 features. If Nintendo is leaving it all up to the devs and publishers you are going to see a mismash of features between multiplatform versions of the same games. The best approach is to require features and to build and maintain the online infrastructure yourself.

In short ... the developers spend enough time simply making the game and most of the time they aren't going to commit resources to adding in features that aren't required. At this point Microsoft has the best system with XBL because you know your game is going to support X feature because its built into the platform.

@Cypher FDP
lol that made me spit take.

@A Sandwich

I guess the question is ... do you want a different online account & user name for every game you play from a different publisher?

@PointlessPuppies

Geez, man, lighten up. If anything it was a joke about both Nintendo and Sony. But since you ignored my second point, I don't think there was ever a time when our EA accounts got hacked and nobody knew if our credit card data was compromised and we couldn't buy content from EA or play our EA games online for two months. Does that make sense?

@Johnny

If you think I'm defending this in any way or saying that I am positive that Nintendo is going to get this right, I'm not. At all. On the other hand, I'd like to see them do it right and until I see something that indicates they totally screwed up, I'm trying to say cautiously optimistic. I also don't know if Reggie is the best person to explain this, so I'm taking everything he says with a shaker full of salt.

@A Sandwich

That's a fair minded approach. However, based on what Reggie said I would lean more towards cautious than optimistic in regards to the online infrastructure. I'm still not sure Nintendo understands how critical the online infrastructure is to the success of the 360 & PS3. People expect so much more than just playing with random people online.

@Mal F4cti0n That's right, keep giving Nintendo sound advice. They LOVE ideas that make sense, especially when it comes to the online market.

@Mal F4cti0n

I am not giving advice, merely expressing my opinion that a 'flexibile' online system is becoming the anti-standard. Developers and consumers could be frustrated by it.

While I do LOVE sarcasm, I am not sure where yours is directed.

@greyseal

Sony has made strides considering where they started with PSN. I have no doubt that the PS4 will have a more fully operational unified online structure from day 1. Nintendo is releasing a brand new next gen console. That's different than trying to build upon what was / is already in place on the Wii.

@Johnnynumber5 is powered by cell I don't really feel that's enough of an argument for them anymore. Nintendo has done little with online functionality that has worked, yet they've worked it to varying degrees into the GameCube, DS, DSi, 3DS and Wii. Now we're on yet another console and their approach sounds to be as uninvolved as ever. As the first party, they need to lead here.

Nintendo's hands off approach with something like this just implies to me that it's more of the same. They've had plenty of time to get this right, I think the time for excuses on their part is long over.

@greyseal - I don't know, to me it sounds kind of like what happened with Monster Hunter Tri, where it was run through Capcom's servers but within the Nintendo framework. If that's the case, then I think it's a little too early to be calling foul.

@greyseal
Sony used the same method as every PC game in history, Let the developers determin the success or failure of their online games by not trying to take control of everyone's servers. Rather than force everyone to use their servers they let them handle their own with the added frame work of a network to connect people to them. It does things they way they've always been done while offering up the hand holding and friend lists that Live introduced while remaining a free network that's no worse than anything else out there. So Sony's not behind any curve they're an ALTERNATE to the MS method that many people still arent interested in.

@Softserve

I actually agree with you. My comment was in response to Greyseal when he said "Sony is behind the curve, and Nintendo is on the wrong sheet of graph paper." I said that Sony has made strides in improving PSN considering it obviously wasn't even a consideration when this past gen launched. Nintendo couldn't even do major updates to whatever they called their non-existent online Wii infrastructure because of the way the Wii architecture was designed.

Read this: http://hackmii.com/2009/02/why-the-wii-will-never-get-any-better/

Now, WiiU is an entirely new infrastructure on a next generation console ... they need to have it unified from the start opposed to being flexible (which Wii was not)

I'm not making excuses for them ... being critical and saying this next time around they are expected to deliver something revolutionary because WiiU is a NEXT Gen console.

@PN04
It's called the status quo, and it is behind. Now it's leaps and bounds better than what it was and these comments seem like 2 generations behind on a system that is on par with the current gen.

I think the goal is a persistant online ID across platforms. It's like Netflix. I start a movie for my son on the Xbox. We stop it go to a restaurant and pick up where we left on my phone. Food comes we stop it. Come home and it picks back up on the Blu-Ray player. That's pimp. I want that in my gaming life as well. These comments and attitude just seem short-sighted and are a decade old in mentality. We may not have our flying cars but dammit let's have some progress.

@greyseal

HA, "jury-rig"? It's jerry rig.

Rigging a jury is something way different.

@Mal F4cti0n

Swing and a miss, friend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_rig

@Cap Morgan
Hey, you can't blame us for talking bad about the weather that's going to happen tomorrow when you have the forecaster saying it will literally be raining piss and ****.

@Ospov

I don't think that option is out of the question....

Heck from every action they seem to be making they sure as hell seem like they are trying to cancel the original Wii.

I'm really starting to think Nintendo mantra is "better late than never"