But what would paying do?
Isn't onrine play already p2p? Would adding Official Nintendo Servers in between things reduce lag [i'm no network guru]?
Matchmaking services still proxy connections most of the time, meaning that a paid service means funded servers and funded servers don't have the bandwidth choke put on them that Gamespy's do (also, it means more servers in more locations for less congestion in the service).
In order for the service to be free, it has to be capped on bandwidth and probably connections, meaning that it basically HAS to suck whenever there's more than X number of people trying to use it. If people were paying money for it, Nintendo could justify allowing more bandwidth to be used. As it stands, the "free" model just doesn't work for online gaming of any kind.
Unless they start showing us ads during SSBB online loading screens...
Why can't we setup our own independent matchmaking servers?
Why, indeed.
This would actually be ideal for what we want to do (which is what Valve games like TF2 offer), but my guess is that Nintendo doesn't want their networking code out there on PCs.
It's a damn shame, since Nintendo wouldn't be paying for any of the bandwidth costs and thus the congestion wouldn't exist.