i'd say so, because realistically, you'd have to know the person before you could play them online.

a ton of nintendo online games won't allow you to just have randoms enter into a match with you, which greatly limits the amount of people you can play with, as well as the competition

http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/2006/01/05/

I know the law does, but I wouldn't call a 14 year old boy a child.

edited to add: Plus this is an isolated case and where were the 14 year olds parents who let him go off by himself?

Chris

Considering the Wii already has a browser, from which you can access the evil internet anyway, I don't see why Nintendo made such a big deal out of this. I know there's a parental control in the Wii to disable access to the browser... wouldn't it make more sense to have a similar kind of control or toggle for online gaming?

This is all moot until we have an actual online game for the Wii, however.

I bet that there will be a parental control function associated with the online gaming as well. Good point.

Exactly. There are ways to add protection without making online gaming a pain in the ass for everyone.

I don't mind entering friend codes as long as my Wii online gaming remains free.

I'd prefer free as well, but would be willing to pay for an nice Live like service.

The free argument is kind of weak anyway though, since PS3 has unified friends lists and is also free.

No it doesn't. AFAIK, they are game specific as well.

My bad if true, was just going by posts on other sites.

Again, not a big deal. With game specific lists I'll only try out a few games online--stuff like Smash Bros or Mario Kart if they're enabled--that I'm really interested in. I just won't bother with other games as it's too much hassle. And even these I'll play less as it's such a hassle to have to arrange times in advance, vs. just being able to see if your buddies are online and what they are playing.

But nothing to get bent out of shape about since I'm not much into online anyway and we all knew that online gaming would be one of the Wii's weaknesses going in as Nintendo just doesn't give much of a shit about online gaming.

Ok, looks like PS3 does have an overarching "Global" friends list and you can see which friends are online and what they are playing (which is the key feature I want) and send game invites.

http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/network/friends

That's odd when all the podcasters are complaining about only being able to send/receive invites "in-game." Kinda like someone sending you a Halo 2 message on the 360. You can't read it until you pop in the game. Maybe that is another issue altogether.

Obviously there will be a global thing with Home, but right now it looked(to me) like the Wii. You have one global list, and then different lists per game.

It might be a combination of the two. i.e. you have a global list and can send and receive messages from any game to anyone on that list, but you have to be in a certain game to get or send an invite for that particular game.

If so that would be lame, but still better than having to enter codes and set up friends lists for every game you want to play online with friends.

But that doesn't really sound to be the case from that link, so it might have changed since the podcast people were bitching about it last.

Hopefully someone who plays the PS3 online can verify.

The XBL model seems so simple yet as soon as you make it free everyone fucks it up beyond recognition. That being said I'm more than happy paying next to nothing for XBL.

I'd be more than willing to shell out $50 a year if Nintendo had a good online plan and games like Mario Kart and Smash Bros up and running.

I've made a huge mistake.
I don't know wtf I was thinking this morning, but the blocks are 1Mb in size, not 1Kb. Hell, I did the math on that myself a month or so ago!
HOWEVER!
I don't think that being off by merely a factor of 10^3 is quite as large as a mammoth

Yeah $50/year is only pennies a day, but at the end of the year, I'd rather use that money toward an extra game rather than a 'Wii Live' service.

If Nintendo were to create a 'Wii Live' service, I hope they continue to keep a free service for those like me.

I used to think that way, but I think I'd rather pay the $50 to get more play and enjoyment out of the games I do buy, rather than getting one more game.

Even more so with the Wii which looks to have a sparse line up of personal purchase worthy games like the past 2 Nintendo consoles.

Haven't bought a single Wii game besides Zelda. Super Paper Mario is the next purchase, and of games announced for this year only Metroid, Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros are must buys for me currently. And I'd be shocked if more than 1 of those 3 actually comes out this year.

As such, I'd be happy to pay for a good service that would give me incentive to keep playing games like Mario Kart, Smash Bros etc. for a long time given these personal droughts on Nintendo systems.

Even on the DS I've probably only bought 5 or 6 games a year owning one since launch. And the crappy online service kept me from really getting into Mario Kart and other games online.

I saw a news report on this a while back. I don't hang out in the wii threads so I'm sorry if this has been posted already. Anyway, I'm still not on the "wii-wagon" but I thought this was really cool.

Sorry for not bolding.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070323/...es_retirees_dc

Wii game console bowling over retirees By Lisa Baertlein

Fri Mar 23, 11:33 AM ET



LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Until two weeks ago, Ruth Ebert never had the slightest interest in the video games favored by her one and only granddaughter.


"I'm 82 years old, so I missed that part of our culture. Soap operas, yes. Video games, no," chirped Ebert, who recently started playing a tennis game on Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s (7974.OS) new Wii video game console at the Virginia retirement community she calls home.

"It was funny, because normally I would not be someone who would do that," said Ebert, who picked up the console's motion-sensing Wiimote and challenged the machine to a match.

"I played tennis, if you can call it that, as a high school student. I had such fun doing it," she said.

Ebert swung the Wiimote just like a tennis racquet and said playing the game reminded her of the feeling she had all those years ago.

While she took the early on-court lead, the Wii beat her in the end. Still, it hurt less than her real-world losses: "I didn't mind losing to a video game. It couldn't rub it in."

UNDERDOG DELIVERS

Japan's Nintendo has been on a mission to expand the $30 billion global video game market far beyond the children and young males who make up its core consumers.

And the company, a former underdog best known for fun, high-quality games based on off-beat characters like plumbers -- think Mario Bros. -- has sent shock waves through game industry with the unexpected and runaway success of the Wii.

That $250 console has been stealing the show from Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.'s (6758.T)(NYSE:SNE - news) PlayStation 3, higher-powered consoles that are much more expensive than the Wii.

While those rivals focused on cutting-edge graphics and high-tech bells and whistles, Nintendo focused on making game play easier, more intuitive and more appealing to a mass market.

That bet paid off.

The Wii outsold the new Microsoft and Sony consoles in January and February and is generating its own buzz with everyone from nuns to cancer patients to toddlers.

There are Wii parties and Wii bowling contests. Players, who often look quite silly and occasionally injure themselves in fits of overzealous play, upload video of their Wii antics to a variety of technology Web sites like GameTrailers.com and Google's (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) YouTube.

"I thought it was tremendous," said Ted Campbell, 77.

Last week he played the Wii for the first time at Springfield, Virginia's Greenspring Retirement Community, where Ebert is also a resident.

The community hasn't yet decided where to keep the Wii, although Ebert has volunteered her one-bedroom apartment, with its big-screen TV.

WII WAVE

Flora Dierbach, 72, chairs the entertainment committee at a sister facility owned by Erickson Retirement Communities in Chicago and helped arrange a Wii bowling tournament -- the latest Wii craze.

"It's a very social thing and it's good exercise ... and you don't have to throw a 16-pound (7.25-kg) bowling ball to get results," said Dierbach, who added the competition had people who hardly knew each other cheering and hugging in the span of a few hours.

"We just had a ball with it. You think it's your grandkids' game and it's not," she said, noting that Erickson paid for the Wiis in its facilities.

Greenspring resident and long-time bowler Sim Taylor said his grandchildren are also great fans of video games.

"I never could understand it," said Taylor, who at 81 has surprised himself by adding video games to his list of hobbies.

That isn't the case with Millicent, his wife of 55 years.

"She sticks with bridge," Taylor said.

I finally saw my first Wiis on the shelf yesterday. Six of them at a Best Buy in northern San Antonio.

I doubt they are still there, but it was good to see systems available in the wild.

I find it funny that so many Wii's are making it into retirement homes yet gamers and parents still can't find any.

Probably because the old folks do their shopping before most people get up.

They can shop during school/work hours.

I've got a problem and I hope someone can help me. The news and weather channel work fine but the Wii shop channel comes up error code 209576.

I did a test connection to see if the Wii is connected and it says that it is connected. I've never had this problem before. Does anyone have a clue to what's wrong? Stupid Nintendo doesn't have a 24 hour support number which sucks big time.

Try changing your router's channel to 1 or 11. Even though it connects fine, people have reported a similar problem with the shop channel and this seems to help.

I'm afraid if I change the channel on my router, it will mess everything else up won't it? I've had this system since launch and have never had this kind of trouble before.

I just tried nintendo's support line again and believe or not, it's down.

I don't think so. Most wireless clients find the channel automatically so there may be a period of reconnect but the interruption should be temporary. Has the power on the router recycled recently so that it would pick a different channel on it's own? You may have been on 1 or 11 before that point and now it happens to be on 6 or something.

I'm not saying it'll fix your problem, but it's just what I've heard other people doing.