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Nintendo Puts a Bedtime On Wii U Content In Europe
kc67 writes "Nintendo of Europe is blocking Wii U content in the region that is rated PEGI 18+ between the hours of 3 a.m. and 11 p.m., according to a Eurogamer report. Under these stipulations, the four-hour window of 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. is the only time users can purchase games like ZombiU or Assassin's Creed III or even view trailers for such games. The story originated from a NeoGAF forum user, which reportedly received an email from Nintendo saying the following: 'Dear customer, we would like to let you know that Nintendo has always aimed to offer gameplay experiences suited to all age groups, observing carefully all the relevant regulations regarding content access that are present in the various European countries. We have thus decided to restrict the access to content which is unsuitable to minors (PEGI) to the 11 p.m.- 3 a.m. time window.' Eurogamer has since verified the claim. It received a message stating 'You cannot view this content' and 'The times during which this content can be viewed have been restricted.' Nintendo has yet to comment on the matter."
RPGs with time passage often have stores that sell special goods at a specific ingame time... the "0200 special".
Nintendo seems to have liked that idea enough to implement it in the real world. :)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
too bad...
...tends to handle this issue on its own. At least as far as purchases go.
As for the rest, just do what every single other recent console has done and put password-protected access restrictions in the system. Not only does it give more granular control to the customer, it also ensures that Nintendo's rules aren't enforced on people who don't want them, while also ensuring that night shift workers won't be left without a way to purchase content.
Their solution has got to be one of the worst choices out of the options that were available.
This is the sound that my Wii U makes, when i throw it out from my flat....
Shouldn't a feature like this be tied to parental controls rather than an all or nothing approach?
This isn't DRM, this is just having really weird store hours.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Kids don't purchase games themselves at any time.
When I was growing up I met plenty of heathen children that had no problem jacking cash or credit card from their parents. Of course these are the same kids who would stay up as late as they want anyway.
Your point still stands, this does not make any sense.
This is a published feature of the child accounts. Either the people reporting this just don't know that and are trying with child accounts, or it's a simple case of the feature being implemented wrong.
That's not DRM, that's Parental Controls. Which is the whole fucking POINT. This is a non-issue, a decent implementation of parental controls deals with all of this already, absolutely no reason to restrict things for everyone.
I can think of two explainations. It's possible they have a genuine 'for the children!' moral crusader in management, who believes it is the duty of the company to do all it can to keep children from playing games with violent or sexual content. Alternatively, this might be just a stunt intended to boost the company image as the most 'family friendly' console and thus boost sales with the substantial demographic of over-worried parents.
In France, there are rules preventing 18+ games from being sown on TV before 22:30. Even channels broadcasting on cable, satellite and dsl networks must respect those rules. That poses a problem to channels like Nolife TV, specialized in video games, because a lot of games get a PEGI 18 rating - if the player is able to kill a human-looking enemy, and this is done in a somewhat realist context, it's PEGI 18. As a result, they must cram discussion of a lot of games in a small time slot.
The rule was originally designed for movies, by the way, but the French movie rating is much more relaxed than the games rating. For example, the last James Bond movie did not get any restriction at all, it would be PEGI 18 if it were a game. But the movie rating boards in Europe use different standards.
At then end; it looks like Nintendo took the most restrictive of those rules, and applied them to everyone, as if the WiiU was a TV channel. This will hurt them in more liberal markets. It does not help that Nintendo of Europe is headquartered in Germany, which has the most extreme restrictions on video games, and still requires a separate, different, ugly, enormous, unremovable logo on game packaging and game disks. And this is after the PEGI rating board mainly standardized on rules very close to the German ones...
Sure Nintendo has a bit of a reputation for being rather nannyish but come on, a 4 hour window for 18 rated games? It sounds completely absurd.
I'm guessing this is either complete bullshit, or there's some parental control enabled by default buried in the options somewhere.
This is only for BUYING that 18+ content, you then can play it at any time of the day you want.
Which does not really make sense either, because surely the big problem is not kids buying 18+ games - kids PLAYING those games is bad. And if Daddy stays up late to buy his 18+ triple-X-rated games, those games will be on the console the next day when his kids want to play, so what is the point of this shopping restriction...
To make it more likely that you're tired or drunk and thus easier prey when visiting their store? Or it could be image reason - "it's not our fault you let your children stay up at night". Or maybe someone there wants the online shop to fail for reasons of office politics.
No matter what the reason, what this tells me is that WiiU should be avoided until things stabilize.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Yeah, I was somewhat tempted to buy a WiiU, I don't know why, impulse purchase thing I guess, but this has really closed the doors for me on the idea.
I only really like adult games, with a few exceptions like Mario, Zelda and Pikmin, childish games that plagued the Wii never really did it for me, I like something with a nice gritty story line or just generally a bit more adult in nature.
But seeing as I get up for work at 6:30am each morning, and so tend to go to bed about 10:30pm nowadays (gone are the late night gamer days - growing up sucks!) and don't tend to deviate much from that on weekends it basically means I'd either have to stay up and be tired when driving to work, or forego exactly the type of content that I would play.
So it's lost them at least one sale here, and I suspect many more.
That's brilliant! The server on the other end couldn't possibly know what time it is!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Teachers complaining about sleeping pupils
"Every time a new part of the latest first person shooter comes out, half of my class doesn't show up at all and the rest is barely able to stay awake", Mrs. T, a high school teacher complains. Yesterday the long awaited Zombie shooter "Brains out" came out and it looks like it turned into reality on the Whatyoumaycallit High. Teenagers shuffling across the corridors from class to class, only to drop dead at their desks to catch up on some much needed sleep.
"What' worst is that they don't just buy it, of course, after they bought it they immediately want to play it. And since they cannot buy it before 11pm, they play through the night and now... look at them! Sensible teaching is neigh impossible now, their only answer is 'Braaaaains'. I think Nintendo sure dropped the ball on that one"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I just have to ask why Nintendo does anything like this.
Nintendo isn't the only one. Ubisoft's UPlay and EA's Origin don't allow you to buy age 18 content outside of 23:00-6:00 either, even age 16 is locked between 22:00-6:00.
Certainly the latter seems like the best idea - if you don't like the platform, don't buy it.
From Xest's original post that was the great-grandparent to yours above:-
So it's lost them at least one sale here, and I suspect many more.
Hmm... sounds like that's *exactly* what he said he was doing anyway.
Really, your comment sounds like yet another rehash of the old chestnut that because someone isn't being forced to buy something they have no right to criticise it. Wrong.
If you're in bed by dinnertime because you're up at 6:30am, you may have some sleeping problems, though.
Maybe he will, maybe he won't. But you're obviously using it as an excuse to deflect criticism of a rather stupid idea Nintendo had, and turn the attack against Xest instead.
Personally, I'm quite happy for access to "mature" content to be restricted in some way, and for parents to be given the power to stop their children accessing it. But the way they're doing it here is quite stupid, and smacks of an agenda and/or attempt to project an image as opposed to actually being useful. It's the worst aspects of "Think of the Children" and its equivalent of Security Theatre rolled into one.
Time-based censorship was acceptable in the old "one way" TV days because there was no better way of doing it than restricting such material to times when children were (or should have been) in bed. Even then, (e.g.) video rental stores didn't restrict rental of adult-rated material to certain hours, they simply required proof of age. If this 30-years-out-of-date approach was genuinely the best parental content control that Nintendo could manage in this day and age, then they should sack the entire team that came up with the idea... but of course, it's not, it's a Family-Values-Theatre stunt.
OTOH, this could (and deservedly should) come back and bite them on the backside with gamers who *do* want "mature" content (like, er... adults). Such pseudo-Nannyish nonsense suggests that Nintendo are going to be playing silly b****rs and interfering with such material in an attempt to pander to their image. Given that the "next gen" Wii U is at best little better than the current-gen consoles and the new XBox will probably arrive in the next year and blow it out of the water, most such gamers will probaby not bother with it anyway...
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The Nintendo "Curfew U"!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
This is quite logical if you think about it. Get kids used to government agencies telling them what they can and cant do at certain hours 'for their protection', and they will grow up expecting it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----