Nintendo reveals new pay to play Wii service
Category: Wii, Posted: 02/22/2008 at 11:01PM CST by Billy Wang, Previews Editor
During the ongoing GDC '08 festivities, Nintendo announced a pay to play service for some upcoming Wi-Fi enabled Wii games.
Dubbed the "Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Pay and Play" service, this new endeavor will surely confuse the gamers that once thought Nintendo would continue to support free online gameplay.
In a presentation, Takashi Aoyama, Nintendo project leader, announced the service at GDC '08 but didn't specify which upcoming games would require a purchase or a price tag for these games.
In effort to distinguish from free titles, the "Pay and Play" games will be identified with a red icon on the game's box instead of the blue Wi-Fi icon.
So to sum it up, the Wii's Wi-Fi Connection (Internet play) will remain free, while additional services or games may have to be paid for. In other words, Nintendo is trying to get more money from us. But from a developer's point of view, this new revenue stream may give light to some creative game ideas. Also would persistent online games eventually come to the Wii? World of Warcraft for the Wii, who knows!
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Hopefully this will only be for MMOGs where a service fee is needed to cover server costs (like WoW). Milking customers like XBL does is ridiculous. I shouldn't have to pay for the technical equivalent of access to an IRC server.
OMG, this cant be serious? i'm losing faith, no joke.
Xbox live is still better than playstaion network. If they update the features with helpful things (like usernames for God's Sake!), then I will be satisfied.
I just hope this isn't applied to SSBB :S
I doubt it will, I think it'll be part of MMOs hitting the consoles.
Not really sure what to think of this. Thank goodness I don't have a Wii.
I'm just going to come out and say it.
In the realm of consoles, pay to play is probably an inevitable conclusion for all parties involved. How they (aka anyone) can continue to eat money on each console sold, and also eat the costs to maintain servers, and still plan to turn any kind of profit in the end is hard to see.
but the idea of some being free, some not, thats lame. leave that to runescape.
Not sure what to think of this. Perhaps I'll have a real opinion when the games associated with this start coming out.
Yes, because I LOVE playing MMOs with no communication options! AWESOME!