E3 2006: Wii Wi-Fi details

Wii News | Friend codes to return?

It seems the DS Wi-Fi Connection system will continue on the Wii. IGN recently spoke with Nintendo's Takahashi Tezuka, General Manager of Analysis and Development at the company, and he revealed a few things about how the service will work.

"the Wii Wi-Fi Connection works the same as the Nintendo DS one. It's the three qualities that we emphasize. It's easy, safe and free." said Tezuka. When asked about how it could compare to the central interface of Xbox Live, he said Wii Wi-fi "will be just like the DS so the interface will depend on the software."

More info to come obviously, but this may disappoint some gamers, as the 'safe' part often means 'partially crippled'. Nintendo, with a family friendly company image, don't want any headlines like this one, and are going to great lengths to keep kids safe on their service (by itself an amiable poicy). However, the 'free' and 'easy' parts appear to be working well for Nintendo, as the uptake rate on the DS's Wi-fi service has been much greater then the uptake of Micorosoft's much trumpeted Xbox Live. Indeed, if current trends continue, within a few months DS Wi-fi will actually be more popular the Xbox Live, even though it's been going less then a quarter of the time. As long as there's a decent matchmaking service, and the ability to play against friends, we'll probably survive.

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7 Comments

admeister

5 years ago

I was kind of hoping that it would be different to what the DS is using, friend codes are rather annoying. It would be handy if you could enter game rooms instead, rather than scanning for opponents. I hope the codes are easier to manage, maybe in its interface they could have a division where it had your list of friends and whether they are online or not. That would be useful, as you just don't know using the DS. Then you could challenge them by selecting their username.

Hyperworm

5 years ago

Bah.
Can't say I'm not disappointed.

It's not so much the concept of Friend codes that I dislike as much as the fact that there's going to be no global interface.
Here's an equally "safe" and "easy" strategy that doesn't leave the core gamers with a crappy online scheme:

Standardize "Friend Codes", and have them add the other person to a global Friends list accessible from the main menu
(the only reason this hasn't been done on DS is because "you might not want someone who's your friend for playing Mario Kart to be able to visit your Animal Crossing village". This thought is fine, but friends are friends and should be on a friends list. If you want to stop them from connecting to you for a particular game, use a select-friends or block-friends option within that game, there's no reason to cripple the entire system for it at all.)
Within individual games, in addition to a "just search for any of my friends" option, there should be a "choose friends"-like option, bringing up a list of friends online at the minute, from which you could choose who to play with. Alternatively, a block-friends option, as mentioned above.
Enable chatting with people on your global Friends list from the Wii main menu screen, you shouldn't have to be coincidentally playing the same game at the same time to be able to chat, if you're friends
Give people the option somewhere in the main menu to link their global Wii friend code to a Wii online profile, which tracks stats etc.

The main change is in moving from having pointlessly large numbers of regular friend codes into having one global one, which enables things to be managed from the main menu (because your ID is no longer tied to an individual game), which in turn enables all manner of things that core gamers want from an online service to be implemented, all without damaging the safety or ease-of-use of the system for regular users.

There are ways to achieve what Nintendo wants without giving core gamers a restrictive, frustrating online experience. It irritates me that they've still not realised how to handle online gameplay. And I'm sure I read somewhere they were "looking at the mistakes they made with online on the DS".

This isn't like HD, either; it's not a problem that's going to just go away or be fixed with advances in technology. I imagine they'll keep crippling all their future systems in this way until they hear or realise a better way to handle it.

DancesInUnderwear

5 years ago

^ I'd agree with that.

If not that, then, at the very least, I'd like to see a universal friend code implemented as well, so you've still got individual codes if you only want certain people to get your AC details, if they make a good Smash Bros. opponent but you don't want them for anything else, or whatever, but so you've also got a code for people who you'd be happy to play with in any game can access you without putting in 10 billion different codes.

This universal friend code would also allow you to contact people at any time, whereas, say, a SSBB code would only allow you to contact the person while you are playing SSBB.

admeister

5 years ago

True, and I like your ideas, they're just the sort of thing that I as thinking of. Still, the uptake of their Wifi service has been pretty impressive so far, so I guess people don't mind too much.. Still, I think serious changes need to be made with relation to how it will operate with the Wii.

Qbert

5 years ago

I like your idea Hyperworm. I know that I'm a little put off by the Nintendo WiFi Connection for the DS, as it is a hassle to set up games, (allthough fun once the tedious stuff is out of the way).

admeister

5 years ago

It's certainly a hassle, the hard part with it is that you don't know if your friends are online or not, the service doesn't tell you. The Wii version should at least tell you that. Universal friend codes would be very useful.

themak

5 years ago

I think with 512mb of internal memory individual game freind codes are going to be difficult and I beleive that what hyperworm said has a high chance of being correct. But the advantage of freind codes is that you cannot make contact with someone after playing them unless you know them in person. (Or swap f/cs by voice chat)

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