One sentence of an IGN preview of Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam has the haters all in a frothy tizzy of anti-Wii sentiment today. The sentence? “Gamers hoping for an online component, however, are in for bad news, because one isn’t planned. Activision would not say why, but IGN has separately learned from multiple development sources that Nintendo will not release Wii Wi-Fi Connection libraries to third parties until early 2007, which means that no third party launch title will have an online mode.”
Sure, it stings at first, but the level-headed amongst us realize this isn’t the big deal that insecure Sony fanboys are making it so as to feel better about themselves and their system, which just had its manufacturing forecasts cut in half from six million to three million units. Well, I suppose this would be relevant if the system was actually being manufactured, but it isn’t.
Anyway, trying something different today. My comment on Joystiq’s post about this:
Lots of Chicken Little statements and the usual cast of uninformed statements here. A comment above said there will be a whole two months without THIRD PARTY online support before 2007 rolls around. Good point. In the meantime, we’ll have Nintendo 1rst party titles with online support and a cadre of more third party titles for a Nintendo launch than ever before. And if a system — like the GameCube — that turns a profit is a failure, I officially quit the real world and its silly dependency on logical arguments.
Wii is confirmed online out of the box. No fees, no taxes, no surprises. And first party titles have first access because, like a good company who cares about the reputation of its system, Nintendo is making sure the system is top notch before it grants access to 3rd party titles that may or may not use the system as it should be used. All of you uninformed commenters who said this is a bad thing above… would you allow someone to access your business from the outside before you yourself have made sure it works? Aside from Friend Codes, I’d argue Nintendo has built a workable online platform with the DS. Did we forget this? Oh, I forgot, it’s far easier to fire off a pithy comment on Joystiq than it is to remember things than happened a week ago.
And, to top it all off, as mentioned by Subnet above, this is a RUMOR. I know we all like to jump off the handle and feel big and important with pithy Wii/Sony/MS-bashing comments, but you really do look like a jackass when a week later the rumor turns out to be something completely different.
And Steve, I agree. Everyone yearns to play their games by themselves these days against virtual opponents. What an antisocial bore. I can play a computer opponent with a looping stream of bigoted swear words playing on my speakers and get the same effect as Live. What fun.
Everybody relax and wait until mid-September. I guarantee it will be worth your while.