3rd party Wii games may lack key features

[Steven W]

Nintendo hold back the necessary tools for developing online games.

Check out the Headline for more info.

[Steve B]

it doesn't sound very encouraging, but i suppose if i was rushing to nintendos defense, the ethos of the console is playing with your friends and having a laugh, something which you can do with online gaming, but its not as sociable as 4 people sitting in a living room with beer and swinging their arms like a loon hitting tennis balls

[directhex]

this is a bit lame, to be honest - one of microsoft's key strengths in the console arena is how nicely they treat developers, especially third parties

withholding libraries isn't useful

[Spud1]

Makes sense - Nintendo have traditionally been terrible for 3rd party developers to work with, either in terms of the contracts (with nintendo taking massive cuts), the dev kit availability and as in this case, the available software libraries.

They have apparently got better in recent years since Yamauchi stepped down, but for their earlier consoles - the N64 in particular, they were apparently a right pain. (tip: read the book 'Game On' for more info on this)

[tehsucks]

*shrugs* I don't use online gaming much anyway, and if Nintendo are planning to release the tool for the third party developers later anyway, then it shouldn't be too bad. We'll just have to wait and see what comes of this, hopefully it isn't too bad.