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Nintendo Businesses Wireless Networking Entertainment Games Hardware

Nintendo Considers WFC A Success 28

Posted by Zonk from the that's-a-lot-of-karting dept.
Eurogamer reports that at 200,000 users, Nintendo considers the WFC a success. From the article: "Nintendo has announced that more than 200,000 unique visitors have made use of its new Wi-Fi Connection service since last month's launch, logging nearly 3 million connections around the globe. Wi-Fi Connection allows Nintendo DS owners to play titles such as Mario Kart DS and Tony Hawk DS online, via either Wi-Fi hotspot, wireless router or a special USB dongle."
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Nintendo Considers WFC A Success More

Nintendo Considers WFC A Success

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  • Sony considers Nintendo irrelevant [kikizo.com].

    • Re:In other news, (Score:3, Informative)

      by tyagiUK ( 625047 )
      Interesting that Sony predicts the touch screen of the DS to be a "gimmick", when Nintendo's product is, in my opinion, currently leading in terms of its software library. Since PSP's launch earlier this year, there has been a handful of high quality titles released for it (Wipeout, Lumines, GTA, for example). On many forums, however, it is common to read about people being stuck for choice between the flow of good titles for the DS (Osu! Tatake! Ouendan, Phoenix Wright, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, Castlev
    • That article appears to have been written before the PSP was released. IE before the DS trounced [codepoetsolutions.com] the PSP in total sales.

  • Mario Kart DS's pretty good, in that domain. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hitto ( 913085 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @03:18PM (#14212711)
    I've only tried playing Mario Kart DS, since I live in Europe and Nintendo HATES US for not releasing Animal Crossing (not gonna import it, the people I wanna show it to don't want to read english text) earlier, well, let's say it's a start.

    Pros :

      - I don't think I need to remind how mind-blowingly fun Mario Kart is. Just being able to play it on the crapper was a huge improvement in the GBA episode, now being able to compete against humans at anytime makes it even better.
      - It's free. FREE! No subscription, jus' like beer.
      - No lag. I mean, I once had lag, but I slid the bittorrent upload limit button a bit lower (maybe -5K), and it was flawless. Looks like Nifi needs very little bandwidth, which is very elegant, I might say.
      - No chance of anyone shouting "DIE FUCKER PIG JEW NIGGER", unlike some game that starts with "H" and ends with "ALO 2".
      - Some adjustments can be done regarding the rules. For example, for the first few days, disconnecting during a race would have no consequences, the "loser" losing nothing, and the leading winning nothing. Now, any disconnection in the heat of a race means a loss. It's smart enough to notice you're between two races if you really need to disconnect. There's hope for more adjustments, then.
      - I still haven't seen nazi signs or penises used as emblems, so I'll take it that either Nintendo is doing a fine banning job, or that MKDS players are a bit more responsible than the rest. (that, or I'm lucky, and the unlucky players will flood me with shameful replies in 3, 2, 1...)
      - No communication at all possible through the game. (It's a plus for concerned parents, a minus for me.)

    Cons :

      - If you don't like playing against humans, it sucks.
      - Very simple interface means very uncustomizable interface. That's Nintendo for you.
      - The "friend codes" thingamajig could have been optimized so that after each game, you could specifiy if you wanted to add this or that racer into your friend roster.
      - Four races! That's about twenty minutes play, it's very good, but personnally, I have to spend about two to five *real* minutes in the matchmaking room. Not very "on the go", is it?
      - No battle mode, and not all circuits available for online play, due to lag reasons. WTF, Ninty? If I want to lag, I'll lag, now let me play the *full* game, PLEASE! I'll blame my router, not you guys! Promise!
      - The whole territory of France sucks and is still firmly entrenched in the stone age, so I've only played wi-fi domestically, not in the streets. Okay, it's not a Mario Kart con, just a rant. Désolé.
      - No communication at all possible through the game. (It's a plus for concerned parents, a minus for me.)

    Now, I gotta go do something. TTYL. GG.

    • Re:Mario Kart DS's pretty good, in that domain. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "- No battle mode, and not all circuits available for online play, due to lag reasons. WTF, Ninty? If I want to lag, I'll lag, now let me play the *full* game, PLEASE! I'll blame my router, not you guys! Promise!"

      It's not JUST you that's affected by the lag... it's that it would make the game unfair. For instance, Player A decides to bump Player B into the giant swinging pendulum on Tick Tock Clock. On Player A's game, Player B rams right into it and is taken out... but on Player B's game, because of lag, t
    • - No chance of anyone shouting "DIE FUCKER PIG JEW NIGGER", unlike some game that starts with "H" and ends with "ALO 2".

      I agree this is annoying, but you can turn voice chat off. So you'd rather have a system with no voice chat than one where it's optional?

      • If it's a feature that is always turned off, I'd rather the game programmers didn't waste time on it.
        Granted, a "voice chat only with verified friends" would have been nice, but not necessary.
      • I agree this is annoying, but you can turn voice chat off. So you'd rather have a system with no voice chat than one where it's optional? Nintendo would. They don't feel it's necessary for Mario Kart. Also, they couldn't finish it in time for Mario Kart, so they've hinted that it will be available in Metroid Prime: Hunters. This is unverified to be true, but they are working on voice chat.
    • not all circuits available for online play, due to lag reasons.

      That could also put a strain on the server, seeing as most of the tracks they left out had some quasi-random elements to them, which I'm sure the host generated when playing local multiplayer. However, there is no definite host online, so the generating would fall to the server, most likely, and that probably would be incredibly strainful if over 1,000 matches were being played.

      Just my two cents, not sure if it would work that way, but I think t

  • Experiences with Nintendo Wi-Fi (Score:5, Informative)

    by MilenCent ( 219397 ) <johnwhNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday December 08, 2005 @04:04PM (#14213234) Homepage
    I own two of the three Wi-Fi aware games, Mario Kart DS and Animal Crossing: Wild World. Here's my impressions:

    Mario Kart DS:
    Although only twenty of the thirty-two included tracks are playable, and despite the fact that gameplay chances subtly while playing over Wi-Fi (you can't drag items behind you and karts can't bump each other about much regardless of weight), online Mario Kart is surprisingly playable. You can either choose to play against randomly-selected opponents in your region, around the world, "rivals" with a similar win/loss record to you, and "friends" who you've traded friend codes with.

    It's important to note that, so far, no Nintendo Wi-Fi game allows for you to play with specific people you've not already traded a friend code with. There exist a good number of sites on the web that allow you to trade these codes (Zonk offered his own here a couple of weeks ago), but even if you've traded (and BOTH players must have the other's code to count), you can't be sure to get that specific friend if you choose a Friends game. I can understand they did this to take care of matters of griefing, and also because of the complete lack of a communication lobby. I'm torn on this approach: it'd sure be nice to be able to play against specific opponents sometimes, but it does make setting up a match very, very easy, as the service takes care of all matchmaking automatically.

    It's worth saying that there are players who have decided on off-color or even downright obscene player handles, as well as choosing pictures of genitalia for their kart emblem. So far, it's uncertain what Nintendo plans to do about this, if anything. Once I read on their forums that the proper response to these forms of abuse was to email someone at Nintendo, but later it seems that statement was retracted. Official word so far seems to be that this is the reason for the CYA "Experience may change during online play" message below the ERSB symbol on the splash screens, an attitude that, depending on your view of the matter, is either very irresponsible or surprisingly enlightened. Nintendo is able to track all activity by each DS' MAC address, of course, so it's possible that they could outright ban players for abuses, but it's uncertain if or when they'll do that. It's worth saying that so far, the majority of players I've encountered have no such issues, implying that either fairly few gamers are doing this or those who do it are quickly, quietly sucked into the void.

    A bigger issue with the service is definitely my own fault: there are some SERIOUSLY sharp drivers on the online Mario Kart circuit, and despite the essential randomness introduced by the item system, driving skill still matters a lot. Unlike in some past incarnations of Mario Kart (I'm looking at YOU, MK64!), drivers who are behind receive no artificial catch-up speed boosts here; all of the balancing comes from the item system. (Karts also have an "Items" statistic now, which influences how often you get the good stuff.)

    If you have any illusions about your skill in driving cartoon vehicles, they will quickly be shattered the first time you go up against a driver who's mastered "snaking," which is a technique for executing drift boosts on straightaways. Drivers with extremely high degrees of accomplishment in single-player mode get stars above their name during races, up to three, but you can be sure when you find someone with even one star on their handle that you're in for a tough battle. Similarly, you'll encounter all kinds of strategy online, including players who'll get a Blue Shell and sit on it until just before you cross the finish line. But even in that case, it's balanced by the fact that the driver will probably have to have foregone many other items in order to hold onto that shell. This is the best-balanced Mario Kart, arguably, since the original, and it may be even better than that.

    While we're on the topic of shooting shells at your opponents, the sorriest omission in Mario Kart DS is the fact that its
  • While Mario Kart DS is an excellent game and I'm very, very glad that Nintendo finally entered into the realm of online gaming I hope they don't decide that they've suceeded. Basically they've reached a point where this works, but they don't have a system that works very well. The friend system is clunky and problematic, it's impossible to play a match directly against someone else, etc.

    Nintendo has made a good, functional first step tied into an excellent game. I just hope they keep working at it rather th
    • Search around the internet, specifically game sites. You'll find an interview with the lead Director (or maybe he was the Producer) of MK:DS. In the interview, he mentions that there were a lot of things they wanted to do with the WiFi that they eventually chose to leave out because they didn't have the time. Instead they decided to make what they had working work as well as they could manage, and work on new and improved features for later WiFi releases. So while they consider it a success, they don't
      • Glad to hear it. Nintendo isn't terribly guilty of resting on their laurels, but at the same time they often have a habit of taking baby steps with occasional revolutionary leaps. Sort of an all or nothing philosophy.

        Probably my greatest concern is that they want to focus more on making it simple and "safe" rather than full-featured. Thus the friend system will stick around as some sort of theoretical way to protect children without regard for it being a terrible way to build a friend list for an online gam

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