Nintendo Okie

Chances are if you’re reading this you have a Wii.  Chances are if you’re reading this and you have a Wii you probably have it connected to the internet.  Chances are if you’re reading this, have a Wii and have it connected to the internet you’ve used that functionality before.  Those are a lot of chances, but they’re safe bets in this day and age.  Online interactivity is becoming a huge part of the gaming world now and chances are it may soon be the norm. 

If there is one shortcoming I can see with the Wii system it would be their online strategy.  They have a number of issues that hamper people from really enjoying the online aspects of gaming.  They do some things right, but more often than not the online experience for Wii owners is not as good as it could be.  Let’s start by looking at the biggest use for the internet in gaming and that’s online play. 

PC gamers have been playing online for years; long before consoles ever dreamed something like that was feasible.  It’s second nature to them to turn on a game and be able to connect to friends online.  In the early days you needed to know the IP address of your friends, now you just need to click the online button, so to speak, and you see a list of your friends or games they’ve created that you can join.  Microsoft definitely has this aspect cornered in the console market.  They make it extremely easy to find your friends.  They even tell you what games they’re playing and allow you to join up with them to just chat or to hop into the action.  If you want to play games with friends on Wii you need to have the code that is unique to that person for that game.  It’s different for every game as well so you need to enter this 12 digit code for every game you want to play together.  Then it’s hit or miss as to whether or not the game will tell you that they’re playing the game at that moment.  Some games will let you know that your friend is online, but you still have to communicate with them outside the game to coordinate.  You can’t send them a message asking to play or to join them in a game.  You have to use Skype, or Xbox Live, or *gasp* the telephone. 

It’s just a pain to try to get together with friends online.  The Wii even has a system code that is unique to that machine that you can enter, but for the most part, the feature is used only to send messages.  There are some developers that are getting creative and allowing you to use the friends list on the system itself to add people to your friends list, but it’s still only a superficial feature because the game still has to use the friend code of the person to add them to the in game friend’s list.  Some games have gotten around the friend code issues, but that’s just as bad as having a unique friend code for the game.  Some places like EA have a uniform system, but it only works with EA games.  Early on I was a big proponent of the friend code system saying that it wasn’t that hard to add the code to your friends list.  I’ve seen better systems now and I now that Nintendo’s system is broken and needs to be updated.  It would be a simple fix that could be done with a firmware upgrade.  Make the friends list on the Wii the universal list that will work across all games going forward.  There’s not much you can do for past games, but going forward it could make the online experience just a bit easier. 

The second thing is downloadable content.  There are a few games that use it and this is one of the better aspects to the Wii’s online infrastructure.  Most games make it very easy, if they have downloadable content, to access this extra stuff in the game itself.  You can even add Wii Points, if necessary, in the game.  It’s easy to do and one of the few things about Wii’s online structure that I really like.  Along with this downloadable content comes another piece that Nintendo doesn’t do very well and that’s patches and update for games.  They’re almost non-existent.  Nintendo says this is because of the lack of a hard drive and this may be true, but they have the ability to use the SD card to store things and you can have a fairly sizeable SD card with the updates that have come to the system.

Demos are one aspect of Nintendo’s strategy that really needs to be looked at.  They need them.  In this world of gaming where things can sometimes get strange people want the ability to try out games before they buy them, especially when it comes to the WiiWare games.  Nintendo recently tried out game demos for WiiWare and it was hugely successful.  The demos showed up as the most downloaded software week after week.  That showed Nintendo that people are interested in at least trying out those games.  The developers, almost universally, that were a part of that trial will tell you that the demos boosted sales for those games.  That meant people were trying the games out, liking them and purchasing them.  There’s a lot of good stuff in the Wii Shop, but people aren’t willing to pull the trigger until they’re reasonably sure they’ll like the game.  Nintendo needs to make demos mandatory for WiiWare games and they need to section off part of the store specifically for demos.  Make it a part of the store people can find easily and then allow people to purchase the game if they like it.  Don’t force people to the store after they play the demo.  I’m looking at you Pokemon Rumble.  The other games might have done this as well, but I didn’t play those demos.  There should be a button that will take you to the store if you want to buy the game, but don’t force people to the store if they don’t want to go there.  It’s a bit underhanded and ugly in my opinion. 

The one aspect that Nintendo has, that no other console has is gifting.  I don’t know how Nintendo got this right when no one else did, but it’s a brilliant feature and it should be one of those things that every downloadable store has.  It’s very easy to purchase a game, send a message to a friend telling them they have a gift waiting and they can download it.  You’ve got a large window that the game will be available for download and the end user has the ability to accept the gift or return it.  It’s a remarkable feature for friends and for business as well.  Publishers simply need to gift the game to reviewers and it makes it very easy to get the word out about their game.  This is probably the feature, more than any other, that Nintendo hit it out of the park with online.  

Nintendo has done online gaming in the past, mostly in Japan and so it’s a bit strange that they’ve been so hit and miss with online this generation.  They’ve got some work to do.  They’ve got the foundation of a solid system.  It just needs some tweaking to get it where it needs to be.  It may be too late for Wii, but they’re next system should be a lot better.  Online is the future of gaming and they need to lay that foundation now so that the house doesn’t fall apart in the future.