Free Nintendo Wii Online Service? Maybe….

"What he’s actually said here is that "Nintendo first-party games will be free to play without a subscription.""

Actually, what he said is that there will be Nintendo first-party games that are free. Not that <b>all</b> Nintendo first-party games will be free.

My corporate-speak detector filters his comments this way: The Wii’s online stuff play and features will all be totally free at first, with the obvious exception of purchasing Virtual Console games. But they reserve the right to start selling you online features/play at a later date.

It only makes sense. I mean, he can’t make a statement that effectively eliminates MMOs from the platform. They obviously will have a billing system in place for the Virtual Console. Third-party publishers selling add-ons for the 360 will be asking for a way to do the same on the Wii (three games have sold over $1M in Marketplace game add-ons).

My question, and this is to Nintendo and Sony, is what do you get for "free?" You tell me I can play online against people for free…but does that mean I have the same name across games? Can I see what my friends are playing? Can I invite someone from another game into mine?

If you tell me it’s free, am I getting what I pay for?

Also –

Sorry I missed you at Gamefest. Maybe next time!

I don’t really think anyone is actually doubting microsoft model but now i am begining to think most of the microsoft employees are going to great extent to proove why they have to charge a subscription fee. I don’t really see this connection. If they are not going to charge users for the service then so be it. After all there are millions of free MMORPG servers online that people log on every single day to play.. Why don’t you guys compare your service to those type of games. take a look at Guild wars, or MU online and the remaining thousands. wanna see a list of those type of games go to mmorpg.com and mmosite.com . There are millions of free to play servers. how are they making their money well simple through advertisment and ingame items.

and the argument about having a nickname and buddy list. i don’t really see it as relevant. What i do know is that if wii does have a EA online game you cna be sure they will implement a nickname system. Nintendo is given people a little more room to do what they want.. Besides nintendo is not even challenging microsoft. Nintendo is going a completly opposite direction. They are look for the mass market. Microsoft has clearly stated from day one that they are targetting the medium to hardcore gamers that is why they are under direct comparison with sony. As far as millions are concerned. Nintendo has basically created a whole new genre for them selfs. most who buy a nintendo buy another system.

I think if microsoft is so worried about their stance in the online world then they will have to change theyir own strategy and add more stuff or just plain reduce on the price. already lots of people are happy with just the silver account.. I mean the only disadvantage they get is no multiplayer with other gmaers. microsoft stop comparing your online strategy with others and just try and better your serivce. We don’t care about the other services at the moment, so you beefing up your strategy and let the other companies do what they want to do. If they loose money they will change their ways. none of this really affects you guys either way.

Peace

To elaborate more:

DC and Marvel always had a healthy competition going on during the silver age and modern comics period.  But everyone knows that the heads of those companies also had a collegial relationship.  And that used to be true in video games as well.  The heads of SEGA and Nintedo could get on the phone and talk to each other about games.

Now it seems like getting the heads of the three hardware makers in the same room would risk a fundamental shift in the molecular structure of the universe, not to mention requiring breaking many of the known laws of astrophysics.

Do you remember when SEGA had a road tour where they brought Genesis and Nintendo games to the people?  They had a SNES running Super Mario World set up right beside a Genesis running Sonic the Hedgehog 2.  They invited gamers to play both and decide which one they preferred.

That seems to me like such a much more open and honest approach to this sort of competition.  It’s a here’s what we’ve got, come and check it out, we think you’ll like it, approach.

Right now, Microsoft is probably the closest to doing that (and seems like the spiritual successor to SEGA in a lot of ways).  There has to be some way to just cut the bullshit and the big money swapping hands behind the scenes feeling.  Gaming is in the shadows right now, and I think that sort of thing is poisoning the hardware competition in the same way that it’s fucked up politics.

They’ve always made it clear that it will be an open-model online, and that it will be free to play Nintendo published games online. Obviously in an open model, they don’t have control over 3rd parties.

But if you take a look at the PS2 and its open model system, the only game you had to pay to play was Final Fantasy 11 and the Everquest games. Both are MMORPGs. So I’m not worried about having to pay to play any games online for the Wii.

MS fanboys can for work for MS, and they can have blogs.

That being said, you will not put an opinion on this blog that is negative or private info of the Xbox franchise as long as u still work with MS. For the reason listen above. If you want to maintain your loyalty and reputation with MS and the people u work for/with, u will not say anything that would damage your reputation with them.

But I do believe him when he says these are his opinions, and are not influenced directly from Bill or anyone else in MS.

ot: I just looked at your Gamercard. You already own "Just Cause", "Saints Row" and "Madden NFL 07" =)

But what is Quake 2?? An Arcade-Game?

While Nintendo never charged for their online games on the DS, nor did other third-parties (Taito, Atlus, Activision).

Of course, it all depends on what’s the premise of the game — a persistent world? Servers with new and periodic player events?

Re: "B) whether or not there will be some sort of premium tier of online service people can sign up for with additional benefits (perhaps better matchmaking, online communication, nicknames, who knows?)"

I would be interested to know why any of these features intrinsically require a subscription fee.

On a general note, bear in mind that people reading this blog are aware of the many online gaming services that predate Xbox Live, and the whole range of different business models out there. Stories about the bogeymen that live outside the walled garden stretch our credulity. "

So this is a really interesting discussion.

There’s no denying online gaming has been around forever, particularly on the PC. But most people seem to also agree that online gaming on the PC can be a pain – NAT issues, proxy configurations, patching, system updates, finding games, communication, etc. We’ve heard over and over again from people who want to play online but just get frustrated. The harder core who work through all that admit that, even then, they’ll often have to futz around for a half-hour to get everyone working together, on the same voice client, etc. I’m sure some people have everything set up and it just works, but there’s a large audience of people who don’t have the time or energy to just make it "work".

That’s my perception of the issues many consumers face. Cheating/hacking is another issue that both consumers and publishers face – it’s the number one complaint we hear from publishers, and *they* strongly believe it’s negatively affecting the online gaming ecosystem and would like help to create a level playing field.

So that leads us to Xbox Live – and the extension of that service to other platforms such as Windows as a part of our Live Anywhere initiative. The entire point of Xbox Live was to make online gaming easier – the online equivilent of "tray and play". Over 3M people seem to find value in this, and my guess is that many more will in the future.

Which is why I’m honestly curious why you don’t see value in a premium service? Don’t mistake me, I get that free is good… we all love it. But in the online gaming space, I personally find value to having a better gaming experience as described above. And I’d be one of the first to sign up for a hypothetical Nintendo offering for the same reasons.

Thoughts?

Quake2 is on every Quake4 disc.  You have to complete Quake4 before you can play Quake2 though.  Which is a task.  Quake2′s achievements are all Marvel No-Prizes too.

That’s ok though.

Ozymandias, what do you think about the Chromehounds parts.  Gabe was talking about Chromehounds in the news post on PA this morning, but hasn’t yet posted anything about the parts.  From what I’m seeing, the mood of people who don’t have Chromehounds is beyond grim.  Those who do have Chromehounds seem to be far more pragmatic about it (buy one and trade for the rest or just bite the bullet).

In a way, seems like a repeat of the GRAW escapade, where those who had the game and were playing online just bought in without much thought.

"Ozymandias, what do you think about the Chromehounds parts.  Gabe was talking about Chromehounds in the news post on PA this morning, but hasn’t yet posted anything about the parts.  From what I’m seeing, the mood of people who don’t have Chromehounds is beyond grim.  Those who do have Chromehounds seem to be far more pragmatic about it (buy one and trade for the rest or just bite the bullet)."

I assume you’re talking about Tycho’s post (not Gabe).

As to the parts, I haven’t tried them myself – haven’t really had a chance to get into Chromehounds. The price appears to be reasonably low – ~$1 a part. Since I don’t really know how useful the parts are to the game experience, it’s hard for me to have an opinion on the value to a buyer one way or another.

I will say I’m not personally against premium downloadable content in general as long as there’s value. I think a lot of the angst around the topic is a bit overheated – at the end of the day, *you*, the consumer will decide what’s worth paying for and what’s not. If you don’t think something is worth the money, just don’t buy it – enough people agree with you, the price will change, just as it does for everything else in the "real" world.

"Thoughts?"

Convenience is valuable, I’m not disputing that. But you still haven’t explained why it has to be locked into a system-level, premium service.

Don’t you think that convenience is no longer going to be a differentiator for XBL once the two rival machines with network hardware (built in this time! and open, feature-rich, free services hit the market? Suddenly a subs fee just looks like a big throttle on the size of the userbase.

(To do a bit of ‘corporate decoding’ of my own, I notice that the numbers for Xbox Live Gold takeup are conspicuously absent from your press release announcing 60% Silver takeup. And iirc only about 10% of the userbase signed up to Live on Xbox1.)

As for the PC, well, 6.5M people seem to be put up with the pain to play WoW. I can switch on my DS and play online pretty much instantly … I’m not sure if the baseline level of convenience, which kinda-sorta justified the XBL subs fee back in 2002, is still a problem today.

Having subscriptions at a per-game level (for games that need it – i.e. MMOs) makes a lot more sense to me.

…

J. Goodwin: The DS’s friend code system is built around the requirement to really zealously protect privacy, because there’s no age limitations (or the need to register any identity details) for using the online mode in DS games. The brief was basically to make DS netplay no more complicated than GBA link cable play. (DS + Game + user) are treated as a unit, which is a reasonable assumption for a portable device.

It seems unlikely that these limitations would be carried over to the Wii (as this works in a different role, e.g. the need to have multiple profiles, and to be able to have identity and make transactions on the Virtual Console and WiiConnect24 services). Although there will probably still be a big button that just randomly connects you to another user, DS style, for the benefit of kids and old folks.

if you subscribe to a couple MMORPGs you could find yourself paying more than fifty dollars per month I’m afraid

In the Limited Edition of Quake 4, Quake 2 was suppose to be the bonus, and there was nothing to "unlock." And I did hear a rumor that it will eventually be put up for sale on XBL Marketplace.

The greatest feature of charging someone $50 a year to me is how many people it keeps from cheating or harrassing other players. Sure these things do happen, but when MS finds these people and bans them, they lose that $50, and must repurchase another Subscription card (and hopefully needs to use a different Credit Card Number) to be able to make a new account, and if he decides to do it all again, and gets caught, it is another $50.

And if MS is not banning Credit Card numbers of people found hacking, please start that. Sounds like a great idea to me.

"That depends on how much each subscription costs and the amount of games you want to play online. You could find yourself paying more than fifty dollars a year."

That’s true, but cost isn’t the issue so much as choice. You would still need to pay multiple subs fees to play multiple MMOs concurrently on the X360, the only difference would be that you’d be paying a flat fee on top of *that* to access online play in any other games.