Nintendo Announces 'Pay To Play' Online Play.

[emwearz]

Nintendo will begin charging for certain elements of its online-enabled games in the future.

Up to now, Nintendo has boasted quite strongly about its free Wi-Fi Connection service, but the company announced at the Game Developers Conference this week that it has plans to introduce a 'Pay And Play' service for some games.

Nintendo project leader Takashi Aoyama explained that this new expansion will see the company begin "collecting fees for some services [that] will allow us to adapt flexibly." Users will be able to subscribe on a game-by-game basis, but no titles were mentioned and no pricing details were divulged.

What was confirmed though is that a red icon reading 'Pay And Play' will be present in the place of the blue Wi-Fi Connection icon on game packaging - the original icon will only be used for games that are free to play.

Source : Aussie-Nintendo.com - News

I can understand if they are companys other then Nintendo in house games, but if they charge monthly rates for games like Animal Crossing Wii, Mario Kart ,etc. Its just not on, im a big Nintendo fan, but this goes against all that crap they were talking about 'casual' online.

Every game they put a pay to play stick on better be able to have voice chat, communication via keyboard as well as some system other then the friend code system, because while lack of these features is tolerable on a free service, its not up to par if they want us to pay.

[Thanakil]

Well, it kinda depends on how much they charge tho. If they charge 10$ then yeah it's way too much, especially for one game at a time. If they charge 5$ it's not as bad, but still a little too much if you got 4-5 games where you're paying.

If it's 1-3$, it's already way easier to subscribe, if it's only one game. They don't have to charge much, they still get some good amount of money with only little amounts in popular games.

If they charge over 5$ by game it'll suck, under it's not so bad.

[Phil]

its called making money. if ms can do it, why not nintendo. i mean it is a 100 year old company btw. (they used to be a playing card manufactuer back in the 1800's)

[Thanakil]

I'm not sure if it's really "making money" or simply "we can't take care of everything alone".

If they just wanted to make money, they'd already have announced that months ago and made it active with SSBB, NOW they'd be making money. Plus, they wouldn't make it a "case by case" and more of a "for every single games".

It could be possible that they are doing that for third-party games too, who are looking for something different than Nintendo solution. Giving them the possibility to have their own solution, paid by the games, could make them happier.

Anyway, we couldn't really expect them to offer fully free awesome servers for every game they got indefinitely. I guess it's either "we offer almost nothing because we aren't playing 2D games anymore" or "we fill the servers with ads" or "shell out a little money, we can't make miracles".

[Densetsu]

You know, if their online service was like XBL i wouldn't mind paying 5-10 bucks or something but the fact is that Nintendo's online service sucks ass and wouldn't want it even for free.

To summarize.

****. That. ****.

FTS!

[Thanakil]

Originally Posted by Densetsu

You know, if their online service was like XBL i wouldn't mind paying 5-10 bucks or something but the fact is that Nintendo's online service sucks ass and wouldn't want it even for free.

To summarize.

****. That. ****.

FTS!

Nintendo service do exactly what it's supposed to do, it lets you play online. Nothing wrong in just giving us what we need.

[Densetsu]

Originally Posted by Thanakil

Nintendo service do exactly what it's supposed to do, it lets you play online. Nothing wrong in just giving us what we need.

That's fine. What's not fine is that they want me to pay money for that basic service when i can play for free ONLINE on both PS3 and PC and get the extra stuff. Sure, P2P is for "special" games but if they see it's catching on then it's going to be every second title that's P2P.

[Thanakil]

Originally Posted by Densetsu

That's fine. What's not fine is that they want me to pay money for that basic service when i can play for free ONLINE on both PS3 and PC and get the extra stuff. Sure, P2P is for "special" games but if they see it's catching on then it's going to be every second title that's P2P.

Well, we still have to see how many games use it tho. If it's only a few third-party games who aren't happy of using someone else (Nintendo) service and who want to host their own (for a price) and who pressured Nintendo in letting them.

And even if it catches on, it doesn't mean every game will use it, Nintendo has been trying to make a free service, suddenly using a P2P service for many games will just give them bad rep, which is the last thing Nintendo needs.

They're already fighting over the rep of making kiddie games + lacking third-party games AND being slow to use online (well, the DS online has been good tho). Are they gonna risk having more bad rep over online services even more? Kinda doubt it, I think they'll just keep it to necessary cases, they got more to lose than to win.

Let's wait until they start acting like d*cks (price, # of games) with the P2P service before being so pessimist, right now we don't know how many games + the price + what the service entail, it could be almost nothing, just a "these devs/publishers kept bugging us for it" thing.