Nintendo Dismisses Online For GC Successor

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a GamePro article discussing Nintendo's public attitude to online gaming, even as it extends to the GameCube successor. According to Nintendo's senior VP George Harrison, "[Online gaming] is a consideration. We're looking into it for the next iteration of the GameCube. We just don't believe consumers are ready for it. Right now, no one's paying for subscriptions. The real test comes when you have to start coughing up $15 per month." However, analyst Michael Goodman doesn't concur: "The game console isn't just a game console anymore. It's evolving into a home entertainment system. Nintendo has refused to acknowledge that and it's hurt them."

Comments

Nintendo is right

[Zed2K]

The console public really is not ready for online gaming. Online gaming in general is a really neat sounding idea, but its just not what its cracked up to be. No one wants to pay 40-50 for the game then also have to pay a monthly fee to play online on top of their internet costs.

The analyst is wrong. Game consoles are NOT home entertainment devices, they are game consoles. Everyone who has tried to make them more than that have failed in the extras. PS2 dvd player isn't very good. XBox DVD player you had to pay extra to get the remove and abilities. No one is going to want to surf the web on their game console.

Re:Nintendo is right

[BigDork1001]

I doubt that the PS3 will sell as well as the PS2 did. A lot of people bought it because it was a game system and also a DVD player.

Well now lots of people have their PS2s with the DVD player. Not only that but an actual DVD player costs a lot less than it did when PS2 launched. So unless the PS3 a great machine with super games why get it. If the PS3 launches with games like the PS2 did Nintendo's gonna bury them. One thing Nintendo does good is make a good gaming console. They don't try to add a whole bunch of other gimmicks that muck up the machine.

Nintendo knows the gaming industry. They've been at it longer than their competitors. I trust them if they say that the on-line gaming isn't ready yet. Below someone posted stats that the on-line gaming is far below expectations. Why should Nintendo invest a whole lot of money and effort into something a small minority is going to use and instead focus that money on research and development to make on-line gaming more viable?

Re:Oh Nintendo...

[Tom7]

(Well, the GBA is still cartridge based, and they own the portable scene.)

Don't forget that at the time many CD-based games were just "interactive" postage-stamp movies. I think the craze that nintendo was avoiding was the "multimedia" craze, not so much the "mass data storage on CD" craze.

Personally, most of my favorite games are cartridge based, mainly because the constraints force the developers to concentrate on gameplay, rather than just throwing a lot of graphics and sound at it. Unfortunately most of the games for the N64 still sucked. ;)

How well have the other two really done?

[leifm]

I haven't heard much about either XBOX Live or the PS2 online stuff since they launched. I would be interested to see the numbers of XBox in the wild, and the number of those that are using XBOX Live. It seems to me that that the service has a pretty narrow audience. You have to have the XBOX, have to have broadband, have to be willing to get hardware to get it online (cable, hub, WiFi, etc), possibly run cable, and then buy the Live kit. How many people are actually doing this? Same goes for the PS2 network except I would think the audience is a bit wider there since some games will deal with dial-up.

I myself couldn't care less about online gaming, and I think Nintendo is right at this point. For many people it's to much bother, all to get your ass handed to you by somebody who lives to play xyz Online.

And offtopic but I think it'd be awesome if Rockstar used the PS2 network to stream new radio station content in GTA5(or whatever it'll be called). Radio stations were the best feature of that game, and that would be a nifty use of the PS2's online capability.

Re:Nintendo is wrong

[leifm]

Last I checked, Quake3 didn't have a monthly fee.

yeah, but anyone who felt so inclined could run a quake3 server, which probably isn't going to be the case with console online games. Serving all has to be done by the publisher or whoever, and they aren't going to incur that cost for free.

Probably not a bad assessment.

[pmz]

On-line gameplay looks very expensive to me (money for network adapter, money for game set-up, monthly money for ISP service, monthly money for each on-line game). I always remembered Nintendo at its best with either single-player games or two or four-way games that kids would play with friends. I even played single-player games with friends, where we would take turns or play in a driver/navigator mode.

It seems that on-line games are still in their infancy and are probably fueled most by PC gamers who already incurred the cost of the computer and ISP service. To PC gamers the game fees are really only an incremental cost that is more easily tolerated.

For consoles to really catch on on-line, the prices really need to get driven down, because the main reason for sucessful consoles is large numbers of people too cheap to buy a $2500 gaming PC. For example, consider an average family who recently justified the cost of a cell phone and cable TV in the past several years now confronted with whether to shell out more money per month on on-line games. It took over a decade for cell phones to be in everyone's pocket and often displacing land-line service (rich and poor, it seems); perhaps it will be similar for on-line games.

Re:Oh Nintendo...

[Gr33nNight]

It wasnt the medium that was Nintendos beef with CDs, it was the loading time. Remember those games where it took damn near 5 minutes for the game to load? Miyamoto hated that. Once they could figure out how to eliminate (or reduce greatly) loading times, Nintendo embraced CD technology greatly. The same is with online gaming. When Nintendo figures out how us consumers can play online without shelling out money every month (and still make a profit) they will embrace that too.

Dismisses

[techstar25]

If you read the article, he says it's a consideration that they're looking into. I'm not sure how that can be seen as dismissing. He's right about one thing though...no one is paying for subscriptions, or at least not enough for Nintendo to care. They have their revenue streams and the money is pouring in. MS and Sony are not exactly making a killing on those online subscriptions. Nonetheless in the future it will be interesting to see where Nintendo takes their console, since ...
Sony is basically making a WWW enabled/Cable TV box/TIVO/DVD/MP3 player that also happens to play Playstation games.
Microsoft is on their way to making a (DRM restricted)Windows PC/TIVO/DVD/MP3 player that also happens to play Xbox games.
Nokia has that digital camera/video/text messaging/cellphone (I think) that also just happens to play games.
Nintendo has one console that ONLY plays games and one handheld that ONLY plays games(third party hardware excluded).
If the MS/Sony/Nokia way was better, we'd all be using sporks in our home for silverware. Me, I like my fork and my spoon separate. ;)

Re:History Repeats

[savagegus]

I think you missed the point. Nintendo currently offers an ethernet adapter for the game cube and I don't think that would change for a newer system. The issue is whether or not running an online service like Xbox Live is a crippling mistake.

Re:Here's what's funny

[Gr33nNight]

Heaven forbid you have to write something down! Maybe it would be easier for you to shell out $50 to buy a broadband adapter, then a cable modem connection, then spend time setting it all up, just so you can trade a couple items in Animal Crossing (which kicks ass BTW).

What Nintendo has done is save people from all that bullshit, and make a simple pw system for trading items. It takes 2 mins and works great, so whats the problem?

Am I Alone Here?

[Guppy06]

It seems that most of the posts on here are generally anti-Nintendo in general and pro-online in particular. Am I the only one here that:

1. Owns an N64?
2. Likes the N64 and its games?
3. Likes the GameCube?

"Should have gone with CDs" this and "Missed the boat" that, I really don't care what the analysts (both real and self-imagined) have to say on the topic: I'm still tickled pink by my N64 library, even if you feel the games were "hopelessly cripled" by the "cramped memory" in the cartridge format.

So Nintendo still isn't pushing the online aspect. So what? If I really wanted to play online games on a console, I would have gotten an Xbox or even a PS2. Guess what: I haven't. Even PC online games don't do much for me (I like being able to shout insults to my opponent in the next room). I myself don't really see how an internet connection could improve my Zelda or Metroid experiences. The only GameCube game I can think of that I'd like an online connection with is Animal Crossing, and even then I'd be perfectly happy with something akin to a Dex Drive.

So you feel that Nintendo is making another "big mistake." So you feel the original GBA was a "big mistake" (and neglect to mention that you bought one anyway). So what? I enjoy playing video games on a purple lunch box and I'm old enough now that other peoples' opinions mean squat to my enjoyment of them.