No Unified Online Service for the Wii-U

[Pyro as Bill]

RolStoppable said:

Pyro as Bill said:

Charging based on what generation the game was from was idiotic. The pricing in general just feels awkward. How they release games is awful too. 3 a week or whatever it is is pitiful. Surely the 3DS is capable of playing NES and SNES games not to mention N64 games so why aren't they available? Why aren't Gameboy games available to the Wii? How about Mario Brothers or Kart or Zelda collection packs at a discount?

They're sitting on a goldmine.

They truly are. They have dozens, if not hundreds, of games people would be willing to pay for, but they put up so many unnecessary barriers that people get turned off. Games need to be able to be shared between systems (at least one of each: DS, 3DS, Wii, Wii U) and of course transferable to future NIntendo systems. This way users could instantly access a huge amount of games on their new system, making an early purchase far more likely. Add download play to all of that. Let's say I buy Bubble Bobble(NES) on Wii. I should be able to transfer it to Wii-U, I should be able to transfer it to my 3DS, no....forget transferring. If I want to play it on Wii-U and 3DS at the same time (same account) then, why not? Once it's on my 3DS, other 3DSers should be able to 'download play' it for 2 player action.

Nintendo is afraid to lose money, if they don't charge enough for individual games, but if they actually looked at consumer behavior, they would realize how beneficial it could be for them to overhaul their entire handling of the Virtual Console. Netflix/Lovefilm probably make tons from renting out Nintendo games. Imagine how many weeks people rented NSMB Wii or Mario Kart from them before buying it for themselves. Nintendo could do the exact same thing with their back catalog. Exclusive. How could the competition copy it? Who'd buy a classics sub that didn't include Nintendo?

EDIT: Adding a DS slot to the Wii U would be a good idea. Wouldn't cost much for Nintendo, but add a lot of value. It's not like people hated the Super Gameboy or the GBA player. That would have been my Wii Slim. Drop GC and add DS.

It's amazing Nintendo hasn't even hinted at doing anything of the sort. I'm trying to think of another example of when they've been sat on an unused goldmine.