I fail to see how that excuses Nintendo's inadequacy when it comes to an online service. 

I don't really care for them. I put trophy/achievement addicts in the same leagues as iOS gamers, they're more of a diversion as opposed to a means of really helping the industry progress. Granted, I have seen some games that do achievements correctly, in that you get in game content for doing them, though most are purely just shallow, irrelevant and arbitrary.

tl;dr no the Wii U does not need such a system, but it would probably help its sales a little bit. Not by much though.

I agree with the SSBB type trophy system. I loved those. Not only were they awesome to look at, but like mentioned earlier, gave a history less on the character or item depicted by the trophy.

I'm with you. There no reason not to have it really.

My snobby old school gaming side looks at achievements and thinks "meh, it's just a cheap and lazy means by developers to make you feel accomplished when playing their games," but there's no harm in satisfaction I guess, even if it's cheap. I really do think achievements/trophies provide incentive for a lot of people to keep playing.

I really think if the Wii had a more fleshed out online system, complete with an achievement/gamercard type system that could be shown off to others online, I have a feeling there would have been a lot less of this "my Wii has been gathering dust for months!" talk from these hardcore gamers. I thnk some people just need that little bit of extra satisfaction from playing games these days as games seem to be getting easier and shorter, to make way for more polygons and cutscenes. Not my prefered situation of the state of gaming, but it is what it is..

Also, people in this day and age of the internet, cell phones, facebook, blogs, etc, people like to feel connected, and share information about what games they are playing, what they've done in the game, and like to see what others are playing. When I play Wii, even though it has a lot of fun games, it feels somewhat isolated, with the exception of a few games like Mario Kart Wii. I think this is an overlooked reason to why some of these core gamers myseriously "get bored" with the Wii and it "gathers dust," despite the fact that it has dozens of great games.

Kinda went off on a tangent there, but the point being, I think Nintendo will be doing the Wii U a favor at least a little bit by having it more online focused, and that includes things like better online chat, achievements, gamercards, etc. It couldn't hurt anyway.

Nintendo's network is a baby now,I think which the players want is whick we can see in N's network in the future.

I think it's obvious that they're gonna put something like that. I bet you'll earn them as hearts. Nintendo loves hearts ;)

I don't think so, i never and never will care a little bit about achievements.

They are usless crap.

My usual reaction to seeing them is "Oh... Neato." then quickly going back to what I was doing.A trophy in brawl was another story, I would immediately drop everything and rush for it. I think if the trophy/achievement system is to remain, it should have worthwhile benifits aside from e-peen. New stages, characters, harder difficultly modes, giant heads, and that sort. If you look at my profile, you'll see that I pretty much skipped most of this generation, being completely addicted to FFXI. I did get an Xbox 360 at launch, but I quickly forgot about it, and I never even bothered going past a silver membership for Xbox live. Perhaps I'm a dinosaur, or living in the past, but I miss the days of a meaningful singleplayer experience coupled with a fun local multiplayer. It was a bit of a shock to me, jumping into this generation where local multiplayer is all but dead, and internet play reigned supreme, even at the cost of the single player experience.

I remember my first game after kicking my FFXI habit was playing my sister's copy of Brutal legend. Can't remember the exact trophy, but I got excited thinking that I unlocked something extra. My sister then explained, to my supreme disappointing, that it's just an award for completing something in game, and didn't really give me anything. I'm sure there are games out there that give extra gameplay stuff when you get trophies and achievements, but they're becoming more and more scarce. I'd rather not see Nintendo travel down this path of giving a quick message but nothing else to show for it.

Then again, maybe I'm too old-fashioned for my own good, and I should go back to telling youngsters to get off mah lawn, and go back to playing the Donkey Kongs and the Super Mary-o's.

i rather achieve things in real life then waste extra time getting virtual achievements.

saying that I am sure they will cater to those who need them.

I love how people say achievements get people to finish the game or play the games more. Funny, I thought the game being good was supposed to keep one's interest. If you need achievements to keep you interested in a game then you are playing the wrong game. Simple as that...  If you need some stupid alert telling you accomplished something in game to feel more rewarded about playing the game then you might as well buy an ipad and declare it the best gaming system ever.

Just an example...  I beat a Civ 5 scenario yesterday.  I was happy to beat the scenario (just on normal but will probably go higher difficulty soon).  I plan on trying the same scenario on a harder difficulty not to get an achievement for beating a scenario on a harder difficulty but because the scenario was fun to play.  If the scenario sucked but I played it again on a harder setting just for an achievement then that is a problem.  Basically, achievement whores help support shitty game developers and publishers by renting and buying shit games just for achievements.