In defense of the Wii friend code

Games have gave gone online. With every conceivable title coming with a multiplayer component, each and every company has strived for a plan in online excellence. Arguably, Microsoft's Xbox live service has taken the prize. With an easy to use interface, voice chat, achievements, and gamer tags, the Live service has been used as an example by which to judge all other services.

[PR0F3TA]

yes, yes it is... but not really, who wants to hear little kids. I get that enough on LIVE

[Kakkoii]

They take the isolation to far tho..

They can still have an open online system.. Just remove the text and/or voice chat.

Online play should show lists of rooms of people waiting for a match, and ways of sorting from different countries and whatnot. There should be leader boards and other cool stuff.

You shouldn't have to just sit there watching the "searching for opponents" icon to finally change. I don't wanna sit there and wait.. I want to see what matches are available, and make my own choice.

Right now the online play is pure boring.

[ChickeyCantor]

He has point though, but Nintendo could have made 2 systems.
one that is friendly for he young ones( no chat etc etc)
and one that is user friendly for the people who are known to online gaming.

If the parenting lock is build in with the Wii-itself, then why isn't their Online system having one?

[Monteblanco]

I don't dislike Nintendo's friend codes but there are two problems: 1) you need different codes to different games and 2) voice chat is not possible between friends. Why not allowing a single code to work in all games? I can't see a reason for that. Also, I fully understand why voice chat is not desirable between strangers, but among friends?

[sumfood4u]

Don't Radio Shows do that? maybe in this parallel universe anything possible?

[Lukatoll]

Nothing anyone can say will make me want Nintendo to keep doing what they're doing. I want them to mimic xbox live like their lives depend on it.

[N4g_null]

Man I'm glad I can hear the people I've played in Quake 3. I imagine that what they where doing...sad. Trash talking gets people focused yet more time than not it makes them quit gaming if they loose. The friend code thing can be worked around using a Wii enabled web page. EA does it and blast works does it. That it the future right there. No I don't need voice chat I just automatically mute game now days. Most of the times me and my friend know how we are going to play if we are on teams barking commands suck on screen interface is better it keeps the character of the game also. People sound so retarded with mics.

[PJF_Josh]

the original author says it's ok for nintendo to restrict (and make difficult) the online component so a young kid doesn't hear someone curse... well last time i played halo 3 (not rated E by the way) it was young kids doing _most_ of the cursing and trash talking.

I play my ps3 online the most because that's where the majority of my friends are and, for the moment at least, there's much less cursing/trash talking. I also play the 360 online and mute whomever i need to. the wii on the other hand is not used for online play at all. it was a big enough pain just to get the friend codes setup between my mine, my girlfriend and my cousins. it was actually such a pain (with little to no upside that i can see) that i didn't even bother with friends that have the wii as well. it's just not worth it for me.

[avenfeld]

Perhaps the real benefit here will be that forcing your child to play on the Wii could possibly result in actual behavior modification. If a child is well behaved he is allowed his Xbox 360 trash talking time, but if he is a typical gamer child and behaves in a way that makes the animal kingdom ashamed to share the planet with said child then the Wii is the console of coice.

Granted parents ought to control this, but in the absence of that it can't hurt to have at least one console that makes it harder for kids, both young and old, to say mentally retarded things over their mics.

This way when I'm at dinner parties and I get tired of telling parents the problem is absentee parenting and not videogames Ican just give up and tell them to buy a Wii so it can parent for them.

-Avenfeld