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."

Comments

It DOES come with multiplayer

[NekoXP]

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

Interview with MP: Hunters Creator from May 18

[LKM]

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:

IGN: With multiplayer being Metroid Prime Hunter's focus, and Nintendo's stance on going online with its Nintendo DS software, what can you tell us about the possibility of this game going online?

Kensuke Tanabe: Unfortunately, the game won't support the multiplayer internet function of the Nintendo DS. To do it, it's not that easy and we'd have to build the infrastructure for it to work properly. The timing of the game release and the building of the infrastructure just didn't match. So while it won't be online, multiplayer will still be very very fun.

Re:Anyone know why no Console to PC online games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... Final Fantasy XI

Re:Anyone know why no Console to PC online games?

[Anonymous Coward]

They did this with Quake 3 on the Dreamcast. There are 2 problems with this currently, a company has to have an open service to allow for this (which eliminates the XBox), and there has to be a way for the game to get patches (which eliminates the PS2, Gamecube, and PS3). Now, it is theoritically possile that Nintendo would allow a portion of the 512MB of internal memory in the Revolution to go towards small 'ballancing' patches for online games; the problem still is that if the exploit is not script based it can't be patched.

Re:It's about quality

[buffer-overflowed]

What you're thinking of is possible, the DS will network boot code over a wireless connection(this is one of the ways to boot into DS mode from a GBA flash cart, called the WiFiME exploit). It is an 802.11 device(I can see it's traffic with kismet and pull data out via ethereal). The local wireless LAN play is 802.11, just w/o an IP stack(basically).

So yea, you could, in theory single cart play Metroid Prime Hunters with 3 people located anywhere who don't have the game, just a DS. Just got to route those packets.