Welcome to the third edition of Board Roundtable. Many entries were posted regarding this week's interesting topic: Nintendo's On-line plans.

A special thanks to the 16 members who participated: Noodleman, Dash_Rendar, #1cubeplayer, Omario, King of the Swing, DacMan, Darkcloud, ModoX, Sip, Edge, iceclimber54, Schpickles, nightofdarkness, 64DD, andywilliams, and Kraig.

Now, let's get to it�

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Noodleman: I think that Nintendo are adopting the right strategy with on-line. They are spending money on it but the big bucks that Microsoft and Sony are. I also believe that the success of Phantasy star Online to be used as a test for the whole of the GameCubes on-line future. If the game fails then don't expect Nintendo to release many if any on-line games. Also Nintendo are working with Sega who already have on-line experience with the Dreamcast. So they can learn from the mistakes of the Dreamcast. Microsoft and Sony do not have any experience with taking consoles on-line and are learning from scratch almost.
I have to admit though that whether a game is on-line or not is not something that I take into account when buying it. Mainly due to the fact that broadband is not available and probably will not be available in my area for ages. This is another problem with on-line games, making them compatible with the 56k modem although Sega managed this well with the Dreamcast and that only had a 33k modem (I think).
I think that a game that would really sell on-line games would be a Zelda game. I think it has the potential to be huge it would work a bit like Phantasy Star with you working as a team and going round saving Hyrule. It could be on Link's behalf while he is away saving his sister. A Mario Kart game would also be brilliant on-line as several people on these forums claim to be the best (not me though) We could finally see who is the best once and for all.

Dash_Rendar: Personally I don't think online gaming is the way forward for consoles, I don't know why I just think it works better on PCs only.

Online gaming was never that popular on the Dreamcast, although it never had a huge fan base in the first place, many of those that did buy a Dreamcast didn't sign up for online gaming.
This was mainly due to poor software support; the DC's first on-line game was Chu-Chu Rocket, an excellent puzzle game but not one to start a consoles on-line gaming plans. The game Sega needed at the beginning was Phantasy Star on-line but unfortunately it arrived too late.

Luckily for Nintendo the fore mentioned Phantasy Star will by the Cubes first on-line game so it might be successful for Nintendo after all and as Noodleman stated they can learn from the mistakes Sega made on the DC, but I think they are taking the right strategy by not getting their hopes up too much.


Another on-line advantage for the DC was that in certain games, such as Sonic Adventure and Crazy Taxi, you could connect to that games website and download new characters, power ups and enemy's for each level so that you could extend the games life span.
Nintendo could try and introduce this into their future games, as this was an aspect of the DC that I liked.

#1cubeplayer: I'm not very sure about online gaming yet. I think Nintendo could do great things with the online capability of the GameCube. It is a very risky thing, because Nintendo has to spend a lot of money on the whole online thing and it isnt a sure thing that it will all pay up. I have played games on my PC with people i dont know through the internet and it is very fun because you can get a reputation of being the best there is. It would be really cool if Nintendo held tournaments to see who is the best worlwide, or to give a prize to. And as Dash_Rendar said, i also think it would be a great idea to be able to downloaded new cars, players, levels etc. I am almost sure that Nintendo will come up with something brilliant for online gaming. What I'm most looking forward to is being able to chat with the person you are playing with (that will probably be really hard). In conclusion, I think that if Nintendo plays its cards right online gaming will be something everyone does (only on GameCube) , and something that everyone enjoys doing.

Omario: Online plans are imperative for Nintendo's plan to dominate all aspects and areas of gaming. Online gaming is definitely more suited for PC's. It won't be effective here in europe and in Japan were Broadband uptake is limited and the Monthly pay is �30.00 (expensive).
In my opinion, until there is a sufficient amount of population who have access/or have broadband in all three territories (USA, Japan and Europe) it is pointless Nintendo take such a large risk as Xbox Live, which although good value in the first year has only 1 game to start off with. Although broadband is sufficient enough in the USA will that raise the question of whether will be taken by it and go online with any online console gaming. People may find the subscription to the Broadband ISP, Xbox live subscription a little too heavy on peoples pockets. Not only this but there may be many errors, bugs and faults with connections as always with new technology.
However Nintendo should do the right thing and wait until at the very least the fall of 2003. At Milia 2002 THQ's Brian Farrell was quoted as saying "Broadband is still fairly a long way from being a reality, with it not expected to make a significant impact until around 2005". This being very true in Europe's and Japan's case may be different in America's, were the uptake, availability and economical affectivity of broadband is much on the increase. In the Technology hungry country.
Although this would be a very irregular thing for Nintendo to do it would be wiser, IF Nintendo were looking for sooner online plans. They should do it in the USA the only place I can see Nintendo succeeding online in the near future. Only time will tell. And I'm sure whatever Nintendo do will be the right thing. With good advertising, a large range of games (inc. Mario Kart!) and a good price there is no reason to see Nintendo won't do well.

King of the Swing: Online gaming - this way-to-play will someday take the world by storm. But, it's like a chicken: it'll hatch when it's ready. Try to make it hatch any faster, and it'll probably die.

But, the internet has been round for just a decade or so, and it has just been popular for about two to four years. We need to get the web sorted and have some experience with it before we start using it to play games. If you disagree with that, think of hackers - they are able to use your credit cards and log into your accounts. I was watching a TV show about it once, and it totally changes people's lives. When the web is safe, play to your heart's content.

Dash_Rendar - I agree with you. On-line gaming just isn't ready yet. If under 1% of the UK's houses have Broadband (me being one), why should On-line gaming be introduced to those few people?

I also agree with Omario about the costs - for simple unlimited access BroadBand (or non-BroadBand) internet (one months worth), it costs �30. Then, the BroadBand (or non-BroadBand) conntector for your GameCube will be �25-�30. A year's on-line gaming will be �300 too (for the first year, at least)! Plus a keyboard, mouse and game and the prices are sky-high.

The web will soon be the number 1 gaming place. Everyone that plays games will be included.
But for it to happen, we need another 10 years or so. Miyamoto was right - we need to wait a few years until we introduce on-line gaming. Then, it'll be cheap and more inventive. The possibility of virtual worlds will be massive!

I say, wait 2 generations of consoles first (if Nintendo go that far). Play when the web is cheap and trouble free; not before.

DacMan: I have a feeling that Nintendo may do something a little different than what everyone is expecting when talking about on-line gaming.

Don't get me wrong, I think that there will be on-line games like Phantasy Star Online and other massive online worlds but there is nothing particularly new about these - anyone old enough will remember MUD's (Multi-User Dungeons) from the early 1980's. As far as I can make out a large proportion of online games are essentially the same but with massive improvements on graphics and gameplay. I just don't think that these offer enough scope for the innovative games that Nintendo is so famous for.

What I suspect that Nintendo have up their sleeves is some sort of LAN (local area network) gaming. After seeing the portable screen that attaches to the top of the GC I would not be at all surprised if we see an add-on which allows several GC's to be connected together to allow multiplayer gaming in a way not dis-similar to connecting up 4 GBA's but with a lot more processing power.

Either that or they come out with an online strategy that is totally different to anything we have seen before and it blows us all away because we, being mere mortals, do not have the mental capacity to imagine what they have in store for us.

Darkcloud: You don't have to pay �600 per year for on-line gaming in fact it is not nearly that amount (with broadband that is). For on-line gaming you have to pay �5-�10 per month (plus the phone charges on a 56k modem).

I think that if Nintendo don't make any on-line games they are being stupid. This is because if Nintendo aren't willing to take risks then they are never going to come out on top in the "console wars" and will end up losing a hell of a lot of money!

Edge: What's with all this talk of broadband necessity? I was quite happy playing online games on my Dreamcast's crappy modem. My commands might not have been travelling at light speed but at least I actually got the chance to be part of a community. There's something compelling about being able to interact with people you don't really know, for a good example of this just look at this forum.

Easily the best part of ChuChu Rocket! was being able to talk with everyone in the chat rooms so if Ninty aren't planning of developing full blown online games they could at least create a community. Perhaps they should create a fairly simple bunch of mini-games like Planet Ring that was given away free for the DC. The idea was simple, a variety of Mario Party-a-like games which were progressively swapped for new ones. Perhaps something like this could be coupelled with several forums, news areas, reviews, previews and the like.

I think that Nintendo should get into online gaming now, they can learn from their own mistakes so when global broadband-domination begins they'll already have the experience to make a AAA service.

Another factor mentioned by the big N was that online games weren't profitable. I can't see this changing any time soon. Monthly charges are not an attractive aspect for a any gamer. Perhaps our favourite Eastern company should learn to give a little. The 'Cube's initial price was low with Nintendo hoping to make up any lost money through games, why not sell the game at �40 and get money for server up-keep through gaining a percentage of your phone call charge. They could also use this community to advertise new products more effectively to add some more cashes to their coffers.

ModoX: Like most people, there is a part of me that is disappointed that online gaming, at least for the moment, won't be huge on the GameCube, but you have to think about it from Nintendo's point of view.

Think back to the Dreamcast, online gaming was so hyped for it, everyone was annoyed when it wasn't there at launch, but when they got decent online games like Quake 3 and PSO, with Japan even getting games like Gundam Battle Online, they never payed much attention to them.

You see how cool online PC gaming is and want a piece of the action, but the console audience is very different to the PC audience. The casual gamer will be more excited about the great graphics in the new Tony Hawk's game than the fact they can have a great online experience in PSO.

I think Nintendo's strategy, although it may get criticism, is good from a business perspective. Let the rivals try it out, and learn from their mistakes instead of making your own. You can be sure, once console online gaming is settled in Nintendo will come along and shake it up with something huge.

Sip: I think Nintendo is doing the right thing with online gaming, first watching a bit and see how things develop and then jump in themselves. It could fail, or just not take off like it should. Nintendo has had quite a few failures, amongst others the 64DD, and the 64DD did support a form of online play, but still it failed miserably. So Nintendo has had a bad experience with console online-capability. I think this also explains a bit why Nintendo isn't as busy as, for instance, Microsoft is with online plans.

Providing online services involves taking a big risk. Servers will have to be set up, games will have to be made, it needs advertisement and what have you. And if it fails, all the money that went into that will be gone.

I myself am not very interested in online play, and even less interested when I have to pay a monthly fee for it. And if I had to pay a higher phone-bill next to that monthly fee, then I would leave the whole online play for what it is, and keep playing offline. I have broadband myself, but how is the compatibility? Will the broadband adapter be compatible with all forms of broadband or not? Maybe this is a stupid question, but it is something I wonder.

A game doesn't need an online option to be great, look at Max Payne. If Nintendo sticks to making good games, then there will be good games, online capabilities or not.

Iceclimber54: Compared to Microsofts strategy, Nintendo's is lacklustre. Right now its pretty much testing the waters with Phantasy Star Online. But don't expect much. Sales will be sluggish just like that of FFXI. I don't really see what Nintendo's big titles can do with online so don't look for anything big.
If anything Nintendo will rely on its third party support for online business. Kind of sad since the big online game of the year at E3 (Star Wars: Galaxies) won't be on the console.

Schpickles: Most of the comments we have had so far suggest that people are unsure whether they are keen to play online games, particularly based on the rather limited experiences the Dreamcast could offer with its narrowband service. In my opinion, online gaming could really work, but companies will really have to "go for it" to do so. To make online gaming work properly, the big players have to fundamentally change the way people think about online games. People look at the tens of 1000s playing Counterstrike and Quake on the PC, and naturally assume that this is the way console gaming will go, but with a little imagination it doesn't need to be like this. In fact, if online gaming with consoles is to succeed on anything other than the Xbox, and anywhere outside the USA, developers really need to throw out the rule book and redesign the way online games are done on consoles.
There are two contradicting arguments here. Nintendo's attitude to online gaming is that it won't work as it stands. They cannot see a way to justify spending exorbitant amounts of money making their own gaming network with the current state of world telecoms, and cannot see any games that would profit from online content. But the age-old Nintendo arrogant streak is not present in the message sent out by the GameCube, which may infact be the first "properly" online console out of the PS2, Xbox and GC by September (the Xbox of course has been "manually" made to work online). Microsoft have said on a number of occasions that they believe Nintendo are bluffing, that they actually intend to really attack online gaming. Rather than say "we have no online plans, so why make the effort to make our console online?", Nintendo have made the GameCube very easy to put online, have provided a base set of tools for developers and said "If you can make it work, be our guest!". With all three consoles the ball is in the developers court. I think that there is a strong future for online games, and developers will have to be brave to make it happen. They may have to make some games broadband only. They may have to have a grand dream and follow it through heavy early losses, until it takes off. But FPS are unlikely to be the best way to make online gaming work globally, as they lack the accessibility that console gamers, including many many casual gamers, crave. I would look to games such as Speedball Arena, Auto Modellista and the Massively Multiplayer online space games (Elite 4, Earth and Beyond, Eve: The Second Genesis...etc etc etc) as the future. Maybe an online version of something like Pikmin, or Animal Crossing +. It will only take one cult classic to make it happen, and I would cite the success of primitive text games and quizzes on set top boxes and mobiles as my evidence. It needs a simple, addictive idea to become a 'killer app' and online gaming, probably triggering a spiral in broadband take up. My hunch would be that an awesome online football game would make the difference - bridging the casual gamer divide for online gaming, and with an immediate fan base of millions.

We'll have to wait a couple of years to see the future of online gaming. Nintendo haven't excluded themselves from that future - but it is unlikely that their software will shape it.

Note from Gualtiero: Although Schpickles is a staff member, I decided to add his interesting comments anyway.

Nightofdarkness: While I agree that �14.99 a month for a 128k connection represents good value for money, that isn't really the whole amount. Whether you take that package or the 512k connection at �24.99 a month, you still must also pay for at least the base package, which to new subscribers is now �20 a month. Its a similar story for BT's broadband, while now at around �30 a month, you still need to pay BT line rental of at least �10 a month.

If you already have either cable or a BT phone line, then you can effectively disregard the cost of the base pack/line rental, but if you don't, you must take it into account.

There is also a large installation fee for NTL's broadband if you don't already have cable, �50 if your house is already wired-up, or �75 if it isn't. I believe that BT's service (not the self-installation one) costs �100 for installation (that's what they charged a friend of mine about 9 months ago, and I haven't head of any reductions yet)

And as for not having to pay to play PSO online, the official collector's magazine that was released at the launch of the GC disagrees with you there, saying that in Japan, there will be a free trial, then it'll cost about �4 a month.

I think that in order to be successful, the cost for Internet connections in the UK (and probably across Europe) needs to be reduced, and there should not be a charge per game for online play, but instead an overall charge, as if there is an individual charge for each game, costs could spiral upwards. For example, if you have 5 online games (not unrealistic I think) and they each charge �5 a month to play (also not unrealistic), while each would not seem to cost much, it would add �25 a month to the total cost of playing games online, which makes it a massive amount of money to pay per month.

64DD: Why when game developers always think online games, do they think "dedicated" online games?

They're all complaining about how online games won't make them a penny, so why do they insist on making them simply 100%online, with no single player mode. To me, it would make much more sense just to shove in an online multiplayer mode to the single player games.

In say, SSBM, they could have included a nifty online mode (even though the modem isn't out yet, but you could use it once it was) as well as the single player and normal split screen multiplayer modes. That way people would have more incentive to buy the game, and we'd get our 13% RDA of online gaming.

And about having to run expensive servers. I don't know if this would be possible, as the GameCube is purely a games console so it mightn't be capable, but as with online PC games, would you not be able to host the game yourself on your GameCube, eliminating the need for servers?

These are just a couple of my random thoughts for today, and they're probably a pile of crap (as well as ever so slightly meandering off the topic), so feel free to give me a good firm kicking)

Note from Gualtiero: To actually kick him, make sure you visit our message boards!

Andywilliams: Online gaming will go in either of two ways:-

1. Full blown success;
2. Tit over arse.

Personally, I think that eventually online gaming will be successful, but at the moment, I can't see it being so.

One reason would be that a 56k modem on today's technology is simple way too slow, and would make it frustrating and tedious.

The broadband adapter would be a better choice, but how many people actually have broadband? I haven't got it, and I won't be getting it because I am not prepared to pay the monthly bills for it.

Also, imagine trying to fill in a on screen registration card without a keyboard (bugger that)

So, the question is what do you think about Nintendo's online plans? Well the answer is "bang-on". They are making it possible for people to use it, but not going out on a limb about it.

Lets faces it, Microsoft will be in real trouble if online gaming flops with the amount of money they are spending on it.

Sony, also seem to be investing a fair amount of money on it, with the hard drive and modem, still a risky move.

So with Nintendo, just popping it's head around the door of online gaming, it is more likely to end up coming out smelling of roses, compared to the other two companies (which you know will happen).

Nintendo's business strategy on online gaming is just right.

Kraig: I'm not too into the whole console-internet idea, i think that consoles should just be used for offline games and that games companies should focus all their attention on making really good games that everyone can play instead of making games for the minority of console-internet users and if your modem isn't the latest one out there, your online game will become so boring because your ping time is about 100 times slower than everyone else's. Internet using is also expensive and you will have to pay a monthly bill to play these games online (around �30) which most people cannot afford, and that is almost the price of a new game so instead of getting a new game a month, you are having to pay to go on an old game, and when that game gets boring, you are wasting your money.
Nintendo do NEED to go online though because Microsoft and Sony are both taking the online approach to gaming and many new gamers will buy new consoles to see what playing with people from another country is like and Nintendo will lose out on a lot of business if they fall behind in the times just like their choice of sticking with cartridges which really was a bad move for Nintendo and letting Sony take control of the market and the same will happen if Nintendo do not go online.
Online gaming is not really my thing, but the possibilities of the internet are exciting, such as being able to download saved game files or stuff like cheats and music.
Anyway, when I'm trhasing someone at a game, I like to mock them all the way until the end, that's why four-player will reign supreme when it comes to multiplayer games.

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