Kind of a bummer but I guess it makes sense.

I'd say it makes a lot more sense than their previous excuses for New Super Mario Bros. Wii not being online.

no it doesn't. It's just them being stuck 30 years in the networking past. I live in a world were starcraft online is a thing.

lolwut

I can see the point being made. Starcraft, Starcraft 2, and plenty of other real-time strategy games have online multiplayer with hundreds of units moving around in a single match. I can't imagine Pikmin 3 to be significantly more complicated that some sort of online multiplayer couldn't be worked out. Though if it is, that's pretty awesome.


In the end, online cooperative play would've been a nice treat, but it's no biggie that it is missing.

I think this is, more than anything, Nintendo placing its usual priority on crafting/controlling the game experience.  I don't agree with the method, but I think this excuse about frame rates is a ruse.

I don't really buy it either, especially with some of the odd PR lines Nintendo gives. It would have been nice for a game like Pikmin 3 to have online multiplayer to give some indication of how different Nintendo's new online structure is.

I'll be the dissenting voice that says I don't give a shit. I likely wouldn't have played the game online anyway. I just don't play many games online (Kid Icarus is likely the closest I got to regularly playing a game online ever).

Nintendo and Me: Making and Playing Games Back-Assward Since Xbox Live Launched

I don't think Pikmin lends itself to online play.  A lot of people seem to be making Starcraft comparisons, but the average Starcraft game, when you don't have stupid arbitrary rules like "no rushing for 10 minutes," usually last for less than 20 minutes.  Pikmin online, either coop or vs., might be fun between friends who've reserved a set time and are willing to play together for an hour, but I think the average player, especially if they're playing strangers, will not want to play hour long multiplayer sessions on a regular basis.  If you look at all multiplayer games, especially popular ones, there tends to be a cap on the length of each session.  With the exception of MMO's and Diablo, of course.

Pikmin has a lot more stuff going on in it then all those other online RTS games though.  Pikmin has much bigger enemies on screen and larger more complex environments.  The environments in games like Starcraft are mostly just flat area's that everyone looks at from a top down perspective.  Plus these are point and click games where you're not manually controlling a fully 3D character in 3rd person perspective either.

If Pikmin 3 is anything like the previous Pikmin, and some of the later area's of the game filled with larger enemies and you have control of 100 Pikmin, it's not hard to see why Nintendo is worried about online lag problems.

I don't really see how Multiplayer really works in Pikmin without changing the core gameplay in anything but co-op.

but for network data none of that matters at all. you just bascialy have "where is unit" and "what actions is unit doing/have done to it" and "what has changed with this unit" none of which require constant verification among all clients.

in starcraft you could easily have 800 units in a single game.

nintendo isn't worried about lag. They have no idea what they are doing in the networking world. They don't even have hardware support for tcp. they emulate tcp and send that over udp. They do networking the most ass backwards way they could think of.

In short, nintendo's to cheap to pay for servers.  There's plenty of online games that have 1000's of units on screen and it's really up to the servers.  Good server = no lag.

It's not a big deal, but Pikmin is essentially a strategy game and strategy games can make for some exciting competitve multplayer. It's a shame they couldn't find a way to make it work.

In those other RTS games, how many of them implement physics for the units, all the while having 100+ units in the same place abiding by said rules of physics? That deals with a lot more network data to transmit than a simple "where am I" request for each unit.

Pikmin 2 had some cool multiplayer.  I'm thinking at this point if you have multiplayer you make online an option.  This is just how things are done these days.  Don't get rid of local multiplayer because I love that, but you gotta offer online.

Don't force a game to have multiplayer.  There is nothing wrong with a single player only game.  But if you have multiplayer, there better be some major technical hurdle to not put it online.  I suspect Nintendo is just not doing it to meet launch.

Why is Legend of Zelda not an MMO? Get with the times, Nintendummies.

Not enough stats to grind in a Zelda game.

It might be nice to see a Portal-2-esque dungeon puzzle creation tool. That could be pretty fun.

what are you talking about? what physics? You let the client handle all of that. You think SC2 sends all the data on unit destructions and parts flying off and all that? no. you don't send data you don't need.

I'm OK with Pikmin 3 not having online (I wasn't expecting it anyway), but I'll be pissed if the first Miiverse central game (New Super Mario Bros. U) doesn't have online.

Be honest: yall just want to go online so you can stand around and throw other people's Pikmin in the water.

I don't care at all about competitive multiplayer, but online co-op would have been cool. Still, I'm not going to miss it too much. I just want to play the game now!

Who's down with OPP? All the homies!

Bad excuse, there are plenty of games that have a lot more stuff on screen (battlefield 3) plus the fact that all the stuff flying everywhere has to be able to be synced with not two but 32 players all at once...








It's alright though because Pikmin doesn't need onine play.

Has Nintendo confirmed local co-op?