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Metroid DS Title Not So Much Online
The much anticipated Metroid Prime: Hunters for the Nintendo DS has been revealed to be slated to release without multiplayer. 1up.com has the story: "Really, we could have made this game online. But Nintendo's vision of online play is different from that of other companies...We wanted it to be free, easy, and easy to access for everybody. To set up the kind of infrastructure that we needed, and to meet the launch date we have for this game, the two just didn't match."
If online play is anything like multiplayer in the demo, I'll pass on it. It's neat as a gimmic, but deathmatch isn't exactly what I want from a Metroid title.
Don't people read..
The references state that it simply won't be INTERNET play. You can still
jump in with 4 DS (and only one cart..) and play with 3 of your friends,
deathmatching in the same room or office.
Just not with your friends thousands of miles away in Japan or South Africa, eh?
Someone tell me why that is a big loss?
Neko
But there were no comments when the timestamp was sonething like 8:53 PM. I refreshed Firefox and then it told me that I could not see the story because I was not a subscriber. What happened? Bug in Slashcode? Or were they in the process of pulling the story? I don't see why they would; the final one looks the same.
Something that drives me crazy is that most video game writers have no clue how much it takes to produce a videogame; they assume that there is virtually no effort and no cost associated with adding features to a game (and they're wrong).
Metroid's development probably started any where between 18 and 30 months ago; in the early design stages they were probably pretty uncertain what type of online plan there would be and they probably never intended to have any features that took advantage of it. Now Nintendo probably came to a final decision about the Nintendo DS' online infastructure 9-12 months ago; well after the feature set of Metroid Prime Hunters' had been decided upon. Now (hypothetically) Nintendo could have spent more money, diverted development resources from other features in the game, and delayed the game to tack on some second rate online multiplayer.
A delay of the game would be costly because Nintendo thinks that this game is needed to attract the 'core-gamer' audience to the Nintendo DS; and reallocating resources would have been costly because it would have lowered the quality of the game and thus sold less games (and potentially less Nintendo DS').
Ultimatley it is a trade-off; You can create a game that is of higher quality to the 90% of potential users who are not interested in Online Multiplayer or you can create a game that is better for the 10% that is. It sounds one sided but it was probably a tough decision because the 10% that are interested in Online Multiplayer have more influence over the general gaming public.
...Animal Crossing is still online, I won't mind. I don't care about the Metroid game's multiplayer much anyways, past games in the series have had crappy (MP2) or no multiplayer. It's always been a single player franchise.
Halo 1 did the same thing.
Now imagine you could have played system link Halo using only 1 copy of the game. That'd be damn sweet.
The Metroid demo was nice. I am looking forward to playing the full version when it comes out with friends in the same room. Much easier to talk smack with them anyways. ;-)
Whore.
The DS has problems, I'll be the first to agree. (I have one, and I only use it to watch movies and play MP3s, really).
But online play? Are you serious? There's a multibillion dollar console industry, not to mention computers and the internet, all dedicated to fulfilling that need, quite perfectly.
Its just not something thats gonna get much use out of most people's DS's.
Frankly, complain about a gamefeature and then blasting the system is rediculous. If anything, stick to blasting about the lack of decent games. (Come on Nintendo, give me a reason to purchase more than 2 DS games!)
Umm... The DS has 802.11b wireless too. There are about a dozen online games being released for it this holiday season.
Go Fuck Yourself!
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
I'm assuming lag. A first person shooter almost always requires very quick response times, something that average broadband connection still doesn't allow across long distances. Notice that most online DS games will be quite casual, slow-paced games: Animal Crossing, Ultimate Card/Brain Games, Final Fantasy, Bomberman. The one exception is Mario Kart, but a bit of lag in a friendly kart-racing game won't be a huge deal.
Nintendo is trying to make an online plan that caters to gamers who don't usually play online. The fewer sources of frustration, the better. I can't even count how many times I've seen Halo 2 lag, or how often CS has lagged on my home DSL. It gets frustrating, and the average gamer (you know, one of those 80+% that doesn't play online) won't tolerate it for very long.
The article's angry that Nintendo won't shoehorn in a wireless mode into Metroid Prime:Hunters. Mario Kart and Animal Crossing are doing it too, he says. Nintendo sucks and blah blah because this one game won't have online play!
Oh, but wait, both of those "look they're online so why can't you be" games are based off of existing franchises and so the development time is much, much shorter than developing a completely new engine/game on a (then) brand new system? The turnaround time for putting a good online multiplayer that interfaces with Nintendo's sytem is too longfor Nintendo's tastes? Especially when when the details of their wireless system wasn't settled upon until halfway through said game's development cycle? I guess these aren't viable reasons to the gaming media. Who can say "bias?" I know I can!
If you read the article, you might get the impression that Nintendo somehow changed its plan for Hunters. This is not the case. Hunters was never planned as an online game.
Considering that it's almost a launch title (a Demo version was included with many DS consoles), it's fair to assume that Nintendo had this game planned for quite some time now. Most likely way before they finished the specs of their online service. That makes it very obvious that 1up's article shows a severe lack of understanding of how software development works, as this quote shows:
In fact, it's hardly a news piece as much as it is a rant. It almost looks as if the author was searching for something to complain about, and when finding nothing, decided to just make something up. He calls online play in Hunters a "hot button issue" when, in fact, neither Nintendo nor anyone else has ever hinted at Hunters having an online mode:
He then castigates Nintendo for not "fixing" the very prolem he had just made up a few minutes before:
I don't usually question Slashdot's posting policy, since even stupid articles often lead to interesting discussions, but considering that Hunters was never supposed to be an online game, and considering the overal lack of quality of the article, I really think this one doesn't deserve to be even on Slashdot.
The Slashdot summary is inaccurate. The words "to release without multiplayer" should be changed to "to release without online multiplayer." As others have said, the game will still have multiplayer.
This is really old news. I just found this Interview in IGN from May 18 in which Kensuke Tanabe, Product Manager at Nintendo NCL, explains why Hunters won't have Internet multiplayer:
Why is it that they got Metroid Prime so right (twice!) but got Hunters so very, very wrong?
I've played the demo. A lot. It's not fun. It actually reduced my desire to own a DS.
Nintendo should include the original Tetris with every portable it sells. Turn it on without a cart: Pictochat or Tetris? That would convince me to buy one.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
Poor, poor game companies. What don't they understand? Who hasn't seen the MMO's sky rocket because people want multiplayer capabilities? Give a game multiplayer online and you've got a seller. Example of what NOT to do: Make Coded Arms(PSP) only Ad Hoc mode(Must be within certain amount of ft to play with other player), no Infrastructure(Over internet) mode there. That makes me unlikely to buy the game since I don't know many people who own a 250$ Handheld gaming device. You limit the game and its huge market and re-play value right from the start. Bad move Konami! Get it in your heads game developers, YOU NEED THE INTERNET for multiplayer!
Flat Screen TV for F
Of course, if they get a SNES emulator working on the DS, that's what mine will do most of the time. Back to Super Metroid for now.
Pocket Heaven reports that SNES DS is almost working, though Super Metroid is one of the less stable games.
Why is is no one has tryed to make a console game that plays online with others that play on a PC?
:)
I dont think there is any I have noticed, maybe there is, if so please let me know.
Seems like a great idea to me.
Playing games like Unreal Tournament or Battlefield would be awsome if people on consoles could just join the same online servers as those playing with PCs, so for games like this one, they could just release a Linux version of the server and let either console or PC users play on the same servers.
Once and for all showing console users that the mouse beats the crap out of a controller