If the 3DS e-shop and unified friend code is any indicator, they're in the right direction. No friend code will be the way to go, and use of tags instead.

Well, they aren't building from scratch they have the systems of their competitors to copy from, so given they are designing it in house and outsourcing part of design and most of implementation (if I understood correctly), it should look good. One thing is certain, they may make mistakes, but they definitely won't half-ass it, they are fully backing this.

Nintendo made dual analogs and motion controls relevant.

Dual analogs were tried with consoles before but failed. Sony tried motion controls with PS2 but failed(also powergloves failed). Nintendo did them right and made them standard.

Sony then came along and improved dual analogs and motion controls over what Nintendo offered. Now Nintendo is improving what Sony offers with PSN. >=]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with implementing your competitors' ideas in your product, only certain people ,*cough* fanboys *cough*, really care about these things.

NES/SNES had an online in Japan or something anyways.

i thought the dualshock was the first controller ( from either nintendo or sony ) with dual analogs?

This is what the original PS1 controller looked like. The dual analog one came later on.

yeah and the revamped controller also released on ps1, while nintendo still had the single analog controller for the n64

Which is why I said Sony improved on what Nintendo did.

"Nintendo made dual analogs and motion controls relevant."

guess i misinterpretated what you said there and besides there were several consoles that used analogs before either of them like the vectrex... but in terms of relevance going by sales the ps1 and ps2 sold more than any of nintendo's home consoles so far

so i'd have to say that they played a bigger part in making analogs relevant ( if sales is what counts in making something relevant )