Wii predict

Friday, January 19, 2007 » gaming link thought

GameFAQs has opened their predictions for 2007 up to the users, which has been kind of a wash in that a lot of them are not very insightful and are either completely unfounded ("Square Enix will announce a Final Fantasy VIII spinoff for PSP!") or in the goes-without-saying category ("Halo 3 will outsell Halo 2!").

But, there's this one from user "timpkmn89" that I find downright depressing:

Nintendo will be forced to change its online strategy after wide-spread critisism of poor implimentation in major games, most notably Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Nintendo's use of friend codes and lack of options when it comes to online play will cause complaints across the internet by fans who claimed they ruined the game (as well as from magazines and websites, who use less harsh words). Combined with similar complaints with Mario Party 8 and Metroid Prime 3, Nintendo will announce a new system similar to Xbox Live.

It's upsetting because it's pretty much even money that this is going to happen, given Nintendo's apparent reluctance to focus on online-enabled games and their insistence on sticking with the clunky friend code system for Wii games (probably). Maybe I'm just pessimistic after dealing with the limitations of online DS games (which were revealed to be hardware-related and very deliberate). After all, there still aren't any Wii games with full-fledged online play to give us an idea of what to expect. But isn't the absence kind of worrying in itself? Even Sony had online PS3 games on day one, and who knows what they're doing over there.

The saddest thing about the above prediction is that I can see all of it happening except for the last line—you know, where Nintendo wises up and delivers a robust online program.

But I've got my fingers crossed.

[Here are more Wii predictions, as well as assorted others.]