Nintendo, GameSpy Collaborate on Wii Service 64
It's with a sigh of relief that 1up is reporting on forward progress in the Wii's online service. GameSpy announced today that it is collaborating with Nintendo, using their middleware to allow players to meet up in online-enabled Wii titles. The first title to utilize the service will be Pokemon Battle Revolution, which releases on June 25th. The news is unfortunately not all good. "The technology will also be placed in the hands of third-party developers, although the announcement gives no indication how long companies have been working with the GameSpy middleware. Either way, it doesn't appear we'll be seeing online-enabled third-party releases until the fall, at the earliest." Here's hoping that this marks the beginning of moving beyond 'friend codes'.
I doubt it's the end of friend codes (Score:4, Interesting)
Friend Codes (Score:5, Interesting)
God those things are awful. I could understand using them for the DS, especially for games like Animal Crossing, because you don't want some random guy coming in and messing up your town, but on Wii it's just horrible.
Your actual code is buried in a menu in the address book portion. I've added 3 friend whos have Wii's into my address book, and they say they have added me too, but no confirmation or it working has appeared yet. I've tried to send WiiMail to them but they never get it.
The same people on my 360 gamertag list, they get the messages I send, even the ones with voice almost instantanously.
If this helps alleviate the usage of friend codes, i'm all for it.
Re:I doubt it's the end of friend codes (Score:3, Interesting)
The DS has to have per-game Friends Codes because they didn't have any of the network backend in place when the system came out. The Wii should only need the system Friend Code to sign up for the service, which is not a thing of evil. (You'd have to enter in your credit card number to sign up for Xbox Live, so it's not like the alternate involves no punching-in of numbers)
Hopefully, since there's an actual UI in place on the Wii, they'll make adding people to your addressbook more streamlined, without requiring you to manually enter in codes. Since they're adding rosters and leaderboards, I'd be surprised if they don't.
Ideally, you'd also be able to link your Wii Wi-Fi Connection account to your Mii, so you can load it onto your Wiimote and connect to WFC from a friend's house.
Re:Looking forward to... (Score:4, Interesting)
Fortunately, in some games (Gears of War in particular) you can mute specific people, but still hear the rest. I'll take that system any time.