Xbox Live – Nintendo's Next Target?

From wiichat.com

"With next month's new format E3 (July 11th to July 13th) looming over us like a mysterious cloud, there's recently been rumblings of Nintendo unveiling an Xbox Live style downloads system for Wii. Given the popularity of the format and the Japanese company's ever growing desire to expand its media functions it seems that we may get the first glimpse of this at July's Expo."

[23478ueyur_938223]

I don't know about this. I don't think Nintendo can just jump in and beat Xbox Live. Xbox Live is well established, Nintendo I believe is the farthest behind on online play? I can't remember, haven't played the Wii in a while.

[power of Green]

Not a smart thing to do with Wii's limited capabilites and MS's connections/relationships with big time companies.

Below: Yep Wii's fanbase is most likely Casual consumers that aren't Hardcore enough to buy upgrades for something thats not as capable as the other options.

Well if the demos were free maybe they can use some sort of streaming tech. If you bought a wii for the price then hopefully you don't get charged for viewing a demo as that kind of defeats the purppose in both the sense; a cheapy isn't going to want to be nicled and dimed to death, the point of a demo is to decide if you want to spend money on something.

[23478ueyur_938223]

Yeah, like for the demos, you'd be required to buy an HDD, so I mean it cannot match what is offered via Live unless they expected every Wii owner to bust out on upgrades.

[N4GayFanturds]

DREAM on (to who ever would think this is remotely possible) Nintendo doesn't have the manpower nor the pocket book. They don't even have the resources to do xbox live locally, in Japan only.

[God of Gaming]

Yea... Sony can try and get there with PSN but Nintendo has NO chance... I am sure they will have a nice download system but it will not have the fantastic built in features of LIVE.

[toughNAME]

no one company can take down the monster

[bootsielon]

Unless they get rid of them, Nintendo's online service will keep being major crapolla.

Edit:

ITR, it's precisely because people want to play with their friends, not just with random people, that the "friend codes" suck. You have gamertags on Xbox 360, and you have online IDs for PS3.

[23478ueyur_938223]

Yeah that's another lame feature...I don't see how aliases aren't anonymous, unless you put in your full name, age or address/phone in your online ID.

[ITR]

I hope you guys know you don't have to use online codes to play other people.
You only use them if you want to play say someone in Japan or UK or your next door neighbor. How long does it take to put in the code...maybe min or so.

Friend Codes are not even universal. EA is not even using Friend Codes in it's games it's using something they came up with.

[emptiness]

great article. i enjoyed reading it. not that i would expect Nintendo to do anything of the sort but it was fun to imagine it happening.

i don't think any console is going to topple Microsoft's xbox, amazing online system. but if one does, it would indeed be Nintendo and no other.

[JasonXE]

the profit Nintendo is making from nothing, then they should come up with something better than psn at least. I'm expecting something cool from the wii network, but won't be disappointed if it's nothing good. If they can make the wii network (hmm wii as in we network..catchy) from the ground up and not relying on 3rd party software then it should be something good like xbl does.