Should Nintendo play the "free online" card?

[TruckOSaurus]

NightDragon83 said:

attaboy said:

Why do people keep saying this?  I've played Ninja Gaiden and Call od Duty and the experience was pretty seemless.  And it has Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, a great browser (leagues ahead pf the one on Xbox 360 and PS3), it lets you video chat with the controller, it has Miiverse, and a pretty decent online store.  You can't download trailers like on PS3 and 360 and there's usage limits on demos.  Not a lot of people have mics, either.  Regardless, the online I've experienced was decent.  If it were up to Xbox standards, that would be great but it's almost up to PS3 circa 2008 standards.

Notice I singled out Nintendo, not 3rd parties.  So far NONE of Nintendo's big titles for the Wii U have featured an online mode of any kind.  The fact that multiplayer-centric games like Nintendo Land or NSMB U can only be played locally is mind boggling in this day and age.

At least, Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. 4 will have a good online component but that's off in 2014.