Nintendo Wii Fanboy

I think Smash Bros will deff be online. Also strikers works well most of time which shows good signs.
As for other games, As long as MP3:C is great in 1 player I'm not gonna mind. Also for new games I would like to see Red Steel 2, and Mario Kart Wii

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I think the difference is in the servers. LIVE has dedicated servers for games; Nintendo is letting developers do what they want for online. This prevents consistency in the online structure and, with no money coming in for online specifically, there's not a lot of extra incentive to make online work well.

Hopefully, developers will come to realize how important online is to Wii gamers. I'm not holding my breath though. I think Brawl will be great online but we'll probably only have a handful of other games that do online right in the whole life of the Wii.

It's a good thing Wii is so fun to play locally multiplayer.

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I LOVE online Strikers, but why is the competition pairing so bad? Two-thirds of the time, I'm destroying people 10-0, and the other third I'm getting slaughtered like I'd never played the game before. They should match you based on W/L ratio.

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On-line is quite complicated thing.

I honestly can hardly imaging how Nintendo ensure that casual gamers would be able to play games on-line leisurely.

That was always problem. My best on-line experience was when I was playing with my friends. Following the logic, many games remain unconnected to avoid having to deal with the mess finding good partners for a game.

MSFT has good service. But it is true hardcore service: few casual gamers would consider paying for LIVE because they play not often enough for the service to really pay back. And M$' LIVE grew to be more of tabloid - place to boast achievements - for hard core long playing gamers.

Nintendo can do little with too open free service. If any idiot would be able to play on-line - only idiots would be there. Adding entry fee like M$ does - would leetirize the service as LIVE did.

That's why I think Nintendo doesn't push for on-line multiplayer too much. They "limit" multiplayer "geographically": to single room and single console as most realistic scenario for good multiplayer.

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I'm rapidly losing faith in Wii online. Just canceled my preorder for MoH Heroes 2 after reading an interview confirming "no voice comms due to no announced headset for the Wii". No doubt Battalion Wars will be the same and the cancel button is probably due for the press.

When will Nintendo realise that while it isn't for everyone a large amount of online players want to actually TALK to their team mates.

Nintendo seem to continue their fears of kids hearing abusive language through headsets playing online, why not just add an optional voice comm block into the parental controls of the console :-/

I'm just praying they get a headset announced in time for MarioKart Wii, otherwise the game will be spoiled by becoming another good online game that could have been great. MarioKart DS online worked very well but for me it was a bit of an empty experience not being able to taunt my mates playing online.

If voice comms are optional "on" or "off" in the console settings everyones a winner. Personally I only like to play with friends as with Xbox Live so I'd be perfectly happy with voice comms between friends only.

Anyway, that's my rant over. My only real gripe with Nintendo online but it's enough for me to keep canceling those preorders & spending my money on Xbox360 games instead.

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I am pretty stoked for online, there are a bunch of games coming out in the next few months that feature online, just a few that i'm looking forward to:

Fifa 08
Medal of Honor 2
NitroBike
Battalion Wars
Geometry Wars Galaxies
Guitar Hero 3
DDR Hottest Party
Endless Ocean

And this doesn't even include the single player games that look good, or Smash Bros that will probably be online. Clearly strikers proves that Nintendo Online can work well. I'd like it if they had a matching system based on win/loss ratio too, but thats a small quibble. For the most part the games I play are pretty good due to the games balance. I rarely win or lose by more than 2 or 3. As for talking during matches, did anyone really think this would be included with wii games? I don't think anyone realistically did once we knew there was no headset or microphone in the wii-mote, which was like 2 years ago. I don't care anyway, I would just turn the audio off anyway, just like on LIVE, otherwise the experience is revolting. I do hope they'll impliment some sort of communication, even if it's canned responses, just to get the job done, just as long as its NOT chat.

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"I do hope they'll impliment some sort of communication, even if it's canned responses, just to get the job done, just as long as its NOT chat"

^ @6, you seem to share Nintendos voice comm paranoia. ^

I can never understand whe whole please no voice comms argument, why not make it optional? honestly am I really the only one that avoids playing randoms on Xbox Live and enjoy regular games with friendly banter playing people on my friends list? :-/

This is why my comment that it could at least be voice comms between registered friends only, at least that way you can get the full multiplayer experience playing people you know but perhaps can't meet up with regularly in person(alot of my friends are married so don't get out often), that's what playing online is all about for me.

I these anti voice-comm comments all the time so I guess it's no surprise Nintendo don't bother to implement it. To me if you're playing silent online players you may aswell just play single player games and not bother with online at all.

Ah well, guess I'm just in the minority.

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I enjoy my Wii for when I am playing with real people. When I want online I play my PS3. I am glad Sony and Nintendo don't charge for online. When paying over $50 for games I don't want to pay a yearly fee for online.

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I think that Strikers is doing well for itself, and i can't testify about anything else quite yet

@ worm: very rarely do the rank and win/loss ratio of my opponent determine how tough they'll be in Strikers, but my chief gripe with that game (and a lot of others, probably) will be the lack of a MPH style "rivals" system

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Nintendo is a bit stubborn with Online. Online games sell better. Animal Crossing: Wild Worlds and Mario Kart DS sold better than their GameCube versions because they had Wi-Fi.

I think they will not ignore online anymore because it helps their games sell.

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I agree with the general opinion, Mario strikers was a disappointment for me.
That was mainly to the fact that I didn't know if I was playing online or not.
In the end I took it back.
Wii online really does suck.

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@ iFreddy

possibly, but i think Mario Kart DS and Animal Crossing: WW, would have sold better just because now, approaching 3 yrs old, the DS has sold more than 2x the GC did in 5 yrs

but your point is taken

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I think someone made a good point about the casual market being reluctant to play online, and so most multiplayer experiences remain in the living room.

I think Wii should be careful not to go too casual, though. You need your base -- which are the hardcore game lovers. Those are the people who don't just invest more time and money into games, but also spread the word about what's dope.

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I wouldn't mind voice chat, but I'd only want it if you could only talk to people on the Friends List.
I really don't care to hear some 13 year old kid calling me a filthy Jew and demanding that I suck his big, black wang.
I'm relatively confident that I wouldn't have to deal with that if it were only people on my Friend List.

And Strikers online sucks. The service works great, in my experience, but it's so unbalanced..

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Nintendo online strategy can be similar or better than Sony's strategy. Both services are free. And they can compete with Xbox Live if they want.

Right now, Nintendo WIFI is a joke, a bad joke for gamers. The only way they improve it is if we stop buying their crappy games and support games with good online.

There is no mic to communicate with others, no hard drive for downloable content, no hi def graphics when 50% of Wii owners have HD tvs (see poll in votes channel), no plans for hard core games for 2008... and the list continues...

I am a Wii owner, but if I am paying for quality experiences then I demand quality games. And please Nintendo, don't use excuses like "that's is not casual enough" because some day all those casual gamers will demand better gaming experiences.

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I love strikers online BUT Why does EVERYONE disconnect when they're losing??!?

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I like where Nintendo's online is going, not where it is, but where it will be. I look at the Wii as an expantion of the ds, and if you see the ds' online library by date youll see it mimics the wiis state, it started with one online game, no mic, not much to go by, but Nintendo released a game that showed that their online service is capable (mph) and now games are better then ever.

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I've yet to have any problems w/ Strikers online. Haven't tried Pokemon, but Madden is horrific, so far. The lag makes the game unplayable.

What this means to me is that the Wii is capable, with the right setup and servers, of a good online experience. Strikers isn't much less complex than Madden and shouldn't really be too different in need of bandwidth. So my theory is either Madden's servers aren't working well, or Madden itself wasn't coded well for the Wii online.

By this time next year, stupidities like these should be worked out. There's no reason Mario Kart will have problems, except for not having enough servers. And since it's Nintendo's BIGGEST (announced) online game, I'm sure that will be rectified within a week or two of launch.

Thus far, it's just a wait and see situation, but from what I've seen, I'm confident in the Wii's online capabilities, as well as the capabilities of SOME developers. No reason we should be having problems by the time Christmas is around. (Hence no problems w/ Mario Kart, minus the first week server overloads possibly...which may be the problem with Madden as well right now.)

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As long as the online is free on Wii I could care less. Sony and Nintendo don't charge for online, but M$ rips you off, I mean after you pay $60 for a game, you shouldn't have to pay for online.

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@19 To be honest I'd happily pay $60(or £40 UK) pre year for an online service on par with Xbox Live. Maybe it's payed for but it's unrivalled IMO so far.

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StarCraft, coming soon on WiiWare, please let me dream =)

Could some one call Blizzard?

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@bananaskin,

I guess my wording was bad. I don't care if they have voice chat or not. I'm just saying that I hope they implement communications besides voice chat, so that we can communicate if we want, with strangers or anyone, besides by voice. I want to communicate in game, but I don't want voice chat. I don't want to game with a headset on and I don't need to chat with friends online, but it would be nice to text things to say, I gotta go, or lets play another or whatever. If they offer voice chat, great, who cares, but don't offer ONLY voice chat for people who want to communicate. Hopefully that clears up what I was trying to say.

As for paying for LIVE, definitely not worth it to me. I've been gaming online way too long for free to start paying for it now. Things are supposed to get cheaper as time goes by, not more expensive. I'm really glad Sony and Nintendo didn't decide to engage in this online price gouging thing. $60 games is bad enough. I think as PSN and WFC get more robust, more features and more games, MS will be forced to rethink their strategy. People will be in stores asking the difference and the answer will be, "Oh, this one charges you to play online, but these 2 don't." That can't be good for MS.

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I just wish there was a form of communication in Nintendo's Online. Usually when I played Strikers, my Wii-mote would get disconnected while online, and the game will just keep on playing, leaving me unable to defend myself. I always get mad because I can't even explain to him why i'm losing.

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anyone else think that the smash bros dojo should have its own channel...similar to MP:3 ?

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I was sorely disappointed to find out the Metroid wasn't going to have multiplayer on the Wii. The implementation on DS is solid and I was drooling on doing the same with the Wii.

In general I am deeply disappointed in the Wii's online offerings so far. Many games could have online capability from Excite Truck to Ant Bully.

With that said, for me the absolute most anticipated game for me is Mario Kart. Most of my extended family has DSs and we play Mario Kart online all the time across the country. I UTTERLY CAN'T WAIT until we're doing that on our Wiis! My only hope is that they do it like they have with Mario Strikers and make it so that for instance my whole family can be playing on our TV vs another whole family over the internet. That would RULE RULE RULE as opposed to just one player on our side. Holy cow I can't wait.

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Smash Bros better be online and done right or I'm gonna be pissed! This is the number one reason I got the Wii and it is the number one reason I tell my friends to get it. Smash Bros online? I mean, is there no greater thing? Get it right Nintendo and I will be happy I bought a Wii no matter if you release nothing next year.

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