Nintendo to Charge Money for Some Online Games
By Jonathan on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 5:45 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Games Industry, Nintendo, Nintendo
Playing online games on the Nintendo Wii (though limited) has always been a service provided absolutely free of charge. Well, that might change for some games, as the company has announced certain games will require you to pay Wii Points to get online play. Unfortunately, they didn’t mention exactly which future games will have this feature or exactly how much they’ll cost, but users will be required to subscribe on a game-by-game basis if they want to play online. The games with this new feature will now bear a red insignia reading, “Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Pay to Play,” in place of the normal blue circle. It’s going to be interesting to see how user-friendly this system turns out to be.
Me being a cup-half-full kind of guy, I’m just glad they made this announcement after Smash Bros. Brawl’s Japanese release. If I find a little red sticker on the box when I go to get my copy in a couple weeks though, I’m going to be a very unhappy man. Also looking on the brighter side, I suppose this does indicate in a way that more online games are planned for the future; ones good enough to convince people to pay for online play.
Via Game|Life
I’m not sure how this will turn out. One of the bigger selling points that Nintendo and Sony have had in the past is that their online play is free, as opposed to Microsoft’s Xbox Live. I’m not sure how people will react to suddenly having to pay to play online on some of Nintendo’s stuff. I have to personally say that I’m not too happy about this, as I didn’t buy a Wii to spend more money to play my games.
To be fair though, XBox Live (Gold) is a pretty damn good service and for its price, it’s not overly expensive. Sure, it’s an expensve I and all other subscribers would rather not pay, but it’s there and it works.
However, this is NOT what I expected to hear from Nitnendo.
“Mummy, what’s the 4 digit pin for your cwedit card so that we can play Mawio?”
I actually dont like this, lets be honest, the online service of the Wii is hardly steller as it is, you cant possibly charge for it.
I dont mind paying my live subscription because its a decent interface, runs well (most of the time) and is dead simple to use with the friends lists etc.
The Wii channels however and the Wii Console numbers as ID is completely unfriendly to use.
I have never been opposed to paying for online service. I mean, they are at a great expense to keep servers running and keep games maintained, but this whole idea of charging on a game by game basis is absolutely stoopid, and yes I meant to put two ‘o’s in that. It’s as though Nintendo is trying to compete with the PS2 and original Xbox with this service, and I fear that if they don’t get their act together on the internet front soon, they are eventually going to go the way of Sega when Microsoft and Sony start getting their own solid first party franchises up and running. This is especially true in the American market, which to be honest produces a hell of a lot more revenue than the Japanese market. Sony is over there too of course, but they have had business in America since practically the dawn of the digital age, and Nintendo is still acting like the land of the rising sun is where the money is at. Nintendo may have far more ‘experience’ than either Sony or Microsoft in the area of videogames, but they just don’t seem to be learning from there mistakes like the other companies have done. To top it all off, Nintendo can’t afford a botched venture in the way that Sony or Microsoft, two gigantumous corporations that have their hands in every facet of technology can. For Nintendo, videogames are what hold them afloat, and once the novelty of the Wii has worn off and their under production has been rectified, they are going to have some serious worries in my opinion.