I can accept that the Wii version doesn't have online options, but in return I want them to take down the price of the game, they can't expect to charge 50 dollars for an incomplete game (because they are giving the option to the HD consoles).

The lack of online will hurt them, specially because that its one of the reasons to become an early adopter (since you will find more people to play online), now everybody can just wait till the price comes down to a more reasonable one (40?, 30?, 20?).

Okay, you want online, but that does not make a valid reason to call the game incomplete. If a remake of a game with online didn't have it, that would be incomplete. And even the HD versions having it does not make this incomplete. It just makes them remakes with varying features.

Oh, and online for early adopters really doesn't apply to the Wii, as even online Wii games are not front loaded.

LTNK, logically what you say is correct. But logically people who looked forward to Extraction before it was announced to be on-rails should have seen beyond its being on-rails (and beyond its horrible cover) and bought it, especially given the favorable reviews. Surprise surprise that didn't happen, and I bet it won't happen here either. (and I also bet EA will blame the Wii/Wii audience - again).

Extraction doesn't properly apply, since it took away something from the source (free movement), not simply didn't add something. Otherwise, I agree with the anticipation. My thing is that we won't know if onine is preferred just because people online are upset. If the marketing is good, but the online lack still drives off most gamers, then we will know, not because people on the internted declared it would flop. The internet is only slightly more reliable a predictor than Pachter.

EA doesn't have to use their own servers on Wii, Nintendo provides server support via NWFC/Gamespy.  EA *does* use their own servers on Wii, for whatever reason, but they don't have to.

And honestly, I'd say online support for something like NBA Jam would make much more financial sense than many of the games EA has done it on for Wii.  Hell, the entire EA Sports lineup this year on Wii (Madden, FIFA, Tiger) all still have online play, and those games will all sell less than NBA Jam could have (if it was handled correctly).

@flagstaad  After the great sales of NSMBW despite not having online, I think EA expects it to do alright

Not really the same.

NSMBW is a sidescroller. Online is not something to expect in this kind of game. However, a sports game where you play against other people, that's completely different.

Imagine their other sports games without online... (even on the Wii)

What if some people don't imagine, and just play it offline?

Now while I agree online and off is better, we can't just assume there isn't a substantial offline audience for Wii games, even sports games like this, until we've verified so. So far, we've only verified that a lot are online (X), not the size of those offline (Y) to compare which is greater.

but NSMBW had multiplayer. They could have added online if they wanted too.  there are a few online sidescrollers out there. LBP being one of them. but yeah it might not be that important for sidescrollers would have been nice though

Some of you are missing the point, the main problem here is not at all that there is no online, it's that there is no online while the "free" HD version does have it. Imagine what would have happened had NSMBWii come out on the Wii without online (as it did) but at the same time another version of NSMB would have come out on the HD consoles as a free download when buying something like LBP2. Do you think it would have had the sales it did? Nowhere near, and not because an HD version (which really shouldn't matter for that game) existed.