Wii Pay and Play

Railith

Check this out.

So what is your opinion on this?

I would hope that Nintendo is trying to copy Xbox Live, but I think they want to make us pay for the friend code bullshit.

HMTKSteve

Darn work filters...

Rochelle

Darn work filters...

I can't agree more.

Railith

Nintendo feels they can explore new concepts and channels.

It seems that Nintendo wants to have a game with a subscription cost, and there is only one Nintendo property that can pull that off.

am_dragon

I don't like anything that starts with the word "pay". Who was the marketing genius that named it? Nintendo needs to fix their multi-player stuff first. I would bet 85 to 90% of the people with Wii's don't even have them on the internet.

HMTKSteve

Didn't PokemonCrater close down about two months ago? They were an online implementation of the Pokemon games.

When they closed down they gave some lame excuse about server issues but a site that pulls in around 16 million page views a month is not the type of site you let server issues take down. It is possible the legal arm of Nintendo finally went after them.

A Pokemon game on the Wii with a subscription model could do very well but what would it be based on? What would the players be getting to make it worth more than just buying a game outright?

As someone who runs a Pokemon-based site I can tell you that the target demographic does not have much money to spend. It is more often the parents buying the stuff for the kids. Are the parents going to be willing to buy this for their kids?

I am surprised that Nintendo has not created a Webkinz version of Pokemon yet. Even Ty jumped on that one!

Apreche

I already don't use the free wi-fi. There's no way I'm going to pay for more of it.

VentureJ

Agreed. The only thing that could warrant a Pay to Play system on the Wii is a Pokemon MMO.

HMTKSteve

I would have to speculate that this will involve an MMO game coming to the Wii.

VentureJ

I'd have to agree with you, and it will probably be Animal Crossing.

Infinity

I don't think this necessarily means they will be charging for wifi; perhaps they could offer VC games for money as you play? ($1/hour type deal) As far as other things go, maybe downloadable content and whatnot could be coming, or even Live Arcade-style games. Would you pay if Wii online got to be more like Live? I think so.

I really think a Wii MMO would be cool, especially if they did it right... but they won't.

HMTKSteve

I think this is more of a "pay for long term online gameplay" along the lines of WoW. Even the 360 has games where you pay a monthly subscription fee. I almost bought one for a friend for his birthday.

ZakoSoldier

They're trying to cash in on the all the people that they think will play Brawl online.

am_dragon

Microsoft has a great business model set up right now on live. Charge for multi-player, and chat, make multi-player and chat a huge component of most games for the system. Nintendo really needs to get into the online multi-player arena, they have the means to do it. They just don't seem to care as much about their system. I can't imaging a company marketing "Pay & Play" just call it "Nintendo Play!". Don't use a product name that makes me think I will be poorer for using it.

Rym

If I were them, I'd simply make the Pokemon card game on the Wii, add fancy animations and a worldwide ladder, and then charge a tiny fee for cards. Instant piles of cash.

Conan-San

If I were them, I'd simply make the Pokemon card game on the Wii, add fancy animations and a worldwide ladder, and then charge a tiny fee for cards. Instant piles of cash.

Basically, Magic the Gathering Online for the PC only for the Wii?

God, I would love that.

Though I would like them to fix the damn coin flip so it's not in favour of the computer every damn time like in the Game boy version.