Conectivity
The Nintendo 3DS
One thing about Nintendo. They don't make it easy to stalk children....not that I'd know anything about that. When it comes to the Nintendo 3DS, it seems like Nintendo has done everything possible to make sure that adding friends and actually playing with them is as difficult as possible. While a step up from the older DS, it's nowhere near where it should be at this point in time. Adding a friend involves swapping a twelve digit "Friend Code". It's no worse than exchanging phone numbers. Once that's done, it's done. You're friends. It would be nice if you could just add someone and they have the option to confirm or deny, but that's not the Nintendo way. To add a friend, you're going to need to communicate with them outside of the system. Once you make a friend, the next obstacle is how the heck do you play with them?
We've been able to work around this by being creative. Specific times to play games, calling each other on the phone, or using the internet to message each other seems to work but it's hardly an ideal solution. Time zone differences, lack of an in game message system, and games that just don't allow players to jump in and out are all issues that hinder the process. It's frustrating when you see your friend playing Super Street Fighter 4 and you want to hand them their ass, but you have no way of joining them or letting them know you're online. Nintendo has added a notification light that turns orange when a friend is logged in. I have close to 100 friends on my 3DS so that orange light is going on and off every few seconds. I've learned to ignore it. It gets your hopes up to know that they're online. It breaks your heart when you can't play together. It's like looking out of a window and seeing your friends playing but the only way to let them know you want to play with them is to mail them a letter. By the time they get it, you no longer want to play or their game is long over.
That "letter system" is known as Swapnote. I like to think of it as "Twitter jr". With Swapnote, you can send hand written notes, drawings, sound bites, and pictures to friends registered to your 3DS. They can also reply to your messages. It's a pretty fun time waster (I admit, I'm hooked!) but ultimately pointless. People will ask a question but if you're the message writer, you can't reply directly. You'll just have to make another note, entirely. Imagine making a thread but you can't reply to anybody that posts without making another thread. As a responder to the message, imagine only being able to post once in a thread. Worse still, if someone replies to the note but isn't a friend of yours, you'll never see what they post. It leads to a lot of situations where this happens:
- person "A" posts a note
- Person "B" responds to a the note with a joke
- person "C" laughs at person "B"'s joke
- Person "D" isn't friends with person "B" so he has no idea what everyone is laughing about because he never sees the joke
It's a fun, but flawed app. Hopefully it evovles. In the months since it has come out, Nintendo has used it to distribute free wallpapers and make announcements. It has a ways to go, though. It takes a LOT of friends to really enjoy Swapnote but if you add a lot of people, you'll spend hours just sending any and every detail of your life to other people.
Some software, like Mario Kart 7, goes beyond the current infrastructure of the 3DS and allows you to join a friend online. Hopefully, games like Animal Crossing or Kid Icarus take it to the next level and let you send out game invites, join games in progress, or even send in game messages. In time, maybe we'll even be able to use our own voices with the built in microphone. Right now, connecting with friends with the 3DS is a cumbersome process, at best.
The Playstation Vita
Remember how all of those 360 owners were bragging about how they could party chat with their friends no matter which game they were playing? They made it seem like God's gift to gaming. Well......it is. And it's available on the Vita. Not only that, you can even send messages to friends playing on a PS3 using just a Vita. You can invite people to a game on your Vita. You can send pics on your Vita. There's even supposed to be a video chat option coming soon on the Playstation Vita. VIDEO CHAT on your Playstation Vita. How cool is that?
If you want to add a friend on your Playstation Vita, all you need is their name--even if they own a Playstation 3 and not a Vita. You send them a friend request and they can either confirm or deny. That's it. You're friends. You'll know what they're playing, and if you use the "Near" Vita app, you can even tell where they're playing. Sony has torn down the walls that seperate gamers. Not much more I can say on the matter. It's just great.
Final Verdict (Conectivity): It's no secret that Nintendo is playing catch up to its competition when it comes to online play. The 3DS offers the best online in a Nintendo console to date, but it's still generations behind what the Vita offers. It's not even on par with what the original Xbox was offering almost a decade ago. If you want the easiest experience when it comes to adding friends, if you want the smoothest online experience, or if you just want to stay in touch with the rest of the world, the 3DS doesn't even compete with the Playstation Vita. They even offer dedicated apps for social sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Four Square (whatever the hell that is!). In this online age, Nintendo really needs to get with the times. In case it wasn't made clear, the Vita wins this round by a landslide.
