| Joelcool7 said: Steam is highly unlikely due to Valve's history with Nintendo or lack there of. However Nintendo stated when they announced WiiU that unlike PSN/Live that Nintendo would give developers and publishers virtual freedom online. They stated their won't be a huge network in the sense that Live and PSN are where the publisher is restricted by the limitations imposed by Sony and Microsoft. This freedom is key to Nintendo's online strategy. EA already commented giving their huge thumbs up and other publishers have shown they are very happy that Nintendo will be giving them almost complete freedom to implement online any way they want. Word has it that EA is planning on linking their WiiU players and PC players in future online games. Similarities between PC/Mac online systems implemented by EA have been made suggesting that EA will be completely free to give WiiU users the experiance exactly as they want to. So based on this it would make perfect sense that Origin could possibly come to WiiU. I mean Wii has NetFlix etc....etc.. and as long as EA paid the royalties and the service didn't cut into Nintendo's profitability I can't see them objecting to it on a large scale. Most likely I think Origin might be included in Nintendo's online store. An Origin channel on your WiiU, in fact say Valve's Steam comes to WiiU, imagine going into the eShop and seeing a Steam, Origin and Nintendo store. Transforming eShop into a mall with many different resources. Not to mention these stores and features could draw many gamers away from PC and consoles alike. If offered Origin/Steam a consumer would be more inclined to pick up a WiiU. I am guessing however if either service is on WiiU that Nintendo will request exclusive functionality to differentiate the WiiU Steam/Origin from the PC one. |
Like everyone else my information on what Nintendo is doing is very limited, but my interpretation of what Nintendo said is very similar to yours. The one thing I would add is that (from what I recall) Nintendo was planning on implementing a "full" online service on their own, and publishers could use all, some or none of the features of this service.
While most games would (obviously) stick fairly close to what Nintendo implements, this does open up options for publishers/developers to integrate Nintendo's services with other systems. The obvious connections would be existing online systems that are provided by publishers/developers, but there is also potential for integrating games with non-gaming related sites/services like Facebook/Youtube.
