Nintendo To Begin Charging Money For Some Online Gaming

[wraggster]

Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection service has always been entirely free of charge, but the company will soon introduce a pay-to-play service for some games, it announced at Game Developers Conference.

"Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Pay And Play" will let users subscribe on a game-by-game basis to certain titles. Nintendo project leader Takashi Aoyama announced the service at GDC, but did not say what upcoming games would require payment for the service, or how much they would cost.

To avoid customer confusion, Pay-And-Play games will have a red icon on the game's box that reads Pay And Play, in place of the traditional blue Wi-Fi Connection icon, which will only be used for games that are free to play.

This is a pretty big change for Nintendo, who has always been adamant about wanting online gameplay to be free. While this might attract more developers to the service with a new revenue stream, it also might confuse consumers -- and be a hassle if the payment system isn't easy. You'll use Wii Points to pay for the online gaming, so it should be interesting to see if this extends to the DS Lite or if it's just restricted to Wii.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/02/...do-to-beg.html

[DarkJesus]

Why would they want to do this?

[RV2006]

I don't think that they will personally do it themselves, but for heavy server based games like WoW that attract a heck load of sales, it is necessary for long-term survival.

Those are the developers that Nintendo need to attract.
its kinda like EA buying bioware, they have skills and abilities that EA lack.

Plus if nintendo help these developers directly like this, (which is not what Microsoft do), they can make this system work properly on consoles,
(as I'm pretty sure alot of people were discouraged to buy PSU on the 360, as the costs to actually set up the game is a heck load larger than its pc counterpart..)

Plus the red label is great as it help in consumer freindlyness.

Many times have i picked up a game, almost buy it, and just realise, in a very fine print on the back of the box that I have to pay monthly to play the game.
( I could just take it back if I bought it, but that wastes time, and to many people time is money).

[Sir_Voe]

If it meant voice chat support and doing away with friend codes in said games, I'd be for it I guess.

[ICE]

Bull crap. I have a bad feeling about this.. Better start saving for a PS3 people!

[JKKDARK]

O hwell it's nothing strange, Microsft do the same.

[Shadowblind]

O hwell it's nothing strange, Microsft do the same.

Yes, but Microsoft has hold of the single greatest online service in history. I have yet to see a fun online game for the Wii.

[sabernet]

Why the hell would anyone pay for Nintendo's online service?

Say what you want about the hardware or the titles, but Ninty's online strategy is balls to the wall crappy.

Seriously, you could pay a chimp with mental retardation to produce a better online system then what Nintendo's been sticking with which looks like Jack Thompson and Fox News designed it in tandem.

[kcajblue]

that would suck if they did start making people pay.

i think its stupid to pay to play stuff online.

[Hypershell]

The fact that this is by-the-game says that the payments will only be for specific stuff. I cannot imagine any game which demands you pay simply to be able to play online matches can possibly compete against others for the same system that do it for free. So I don't see this working for anything but MMO's and downloadable content.

I cannot believe they are announcing this while there is still no way to voice-chat over the Wii, though.

Well, the nice thing about being a consumer: your best answer is with your wallet. If red-label games don't actually offer anything superior, stick to the blue labels. That simple. If it doesn't sell, they'll stop making them.