Topic: Iwata Dissatisfied with Nintendo's Online Efforts

[Dirk Temporo]

I'm pretty sure Mop it up meant on a Nintendo system.

[NWR_insanolord]

I'm pretty sure Mop it up meant on a Nintendo system.

No, she didn't. Mario Kart Wii actually sold better than any of those games.

[Dirk Temporo]

Gonna need some numbers.

EDIT: Just checked, I guess it makes sense. If you added up the different games in the other series it would come out differently.

[Ian Sane]

Do you think Mario Kart Wii sold so well because of its online components or because it was the first Mario Kart since the original to be released on a market leading console?  For two generations Mario Kart was a major series on an underdog console.  For anyone who skipped Nintendo consoles during that time Mario Kart Wii was their first Mario Kart in over ten years.  Plus the game was popular with a lot of the blue ocean folks for whom the Wii was the first console and thus Mario Kart Wii was their first Mario kart or possibly even their first racing game ever.  With those factors in place I think Mario Kart Wii would have been comparably successful even if it were offline.  After all online play is more for hardcore gamers and Mario Kart Wii gets a lot of flack from that group for the rubber-banding AI and power-ups that favour poor players.

I wouldn't take its success as any barometer for the success of Nintendo's online efforts.  It's clear that there is a lot of room for improvement.

[Mop it up]

There's no way you can disprove that the online mode wasn't a draw for Mario Kart Wii, especially when you consider the millions of people who still use it to this day. Factors like the packed Wii Wheel and all that marketing certainly helped, but I'm sure the online mode padded in some sales as well.

If you added up the different games in the other series it would come out differently.

Then you'd also have to factor in sales of every Mario Kart game, in which case it'd still win. In fact, I'll bet the combined sales of Mario Kart Wii and DS best the combined sales of every Halo game.

[Ian Sane]

There's no way you can disprove that the online mode wasn't a draw for Mario Kart Wii, especially when you consider the millions of people who still use it to this day. Factors like the packed Wii Wheel and all that marketing certainly helped, but I'm sure the online mode padded in some sales as well.

At the very least I think SSB Brawl's lag is reason enough to demonstrate a need for improvement.  Mario Kart Wii is not reason enough to conclude that things are going fine as is.

[TJ Spyke]

I still don't know what happened with the lag for SSBB. There was no lag for the first few months (I loved playing it online at the time), some time after that is when it got the lag.

[BeautifulShy]

I think it had to do with new players entering matches with not as good connections as the rest of the players.

[Mop it up]

There's no way you can disprove that the online mode wasn't a draw for Mario Kart Wii, especially when you consider the millions of people who still use it to this day. Factors like the packed Wii Wheel and all that marketing certainly helped, but I'm sure the online mode padded in some sales as well.

At the very least I think SSB Brawl's lag is reason enough to demonstrate a need for improvement.  Mario Kart Wii is not reason enough to conclude that things are going fine as is.

I agree that Nintendo's online games need improvement. My point was that Nintendo realizes online games can be very profitable, and I believe they will pursue improving them in the future.

I still don't know what happened with the lag for SSBB. There was no lag for the first few months (I loved playing it online at the time), some time after that is when it got the lag.

I'm sure the fact that more and more people started playing it online had something to do with that. Plus, there are now a lot more games -- and therefore a lot more people -- which use online features, including Mario Kart Wii, which was released about a month and a half after SSBBrawl. This might also have something to do with it, though I don't know how this stuff works, so I'm not sure if that would matter or not.