[Source Kotaku]

What's Super Smash Bros. Brawl Online Like? Eh...

Back before Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released, footage of Nintendo Co., Ltd. in Kyoto and SSBB developer Sora in Tokyo playing each other online surfaced. The online aspect of the game looked very smooth with no lags whatsoever. I'm assuming it is smooth. Assume because I haven't been able to clock a single online brawl. Hello Xbox Live circa 2002.

Sure, the interface is nice and all, but in the last a hour and a half, I've logged on almost twenty times. I have connected to the game's servers, and I have picked my character and battle stage. But, the game hasn't been able to find me a single partner to play against. It searches and searches and then knocks me offline. That's if I'm lucky and actually able to connect. More often than not, it won't let me connect. At all. It's a lot of hassle and not exactly the online experience we've become accustomed to with Xbox Live and the PSN.

Imagine if the entire population of China decided to try to squeeze into the Colosseum. That could very well be what's happening to the game's servers as everyone in Japan tries to fire up an online match. Granted, this also could very well be a connection problem on my end, and I'm simply bitching and moaning. But, I've been connected via WiiFi for a coupla days now, no problem whatsoever. I've gone back through to check if my connection is sound (it is) and have been able to successfully log on the internet via the Wii.

Personally, I think this is mainly due to 20-30 thousand people trying to play a game at once and it should be something that's hopefully cleared up soon.

That doesn't completely excuse Nintendo since they should have known most of Japan was going to want to play this game and play it online but that's not exactly an easy thing to prepare for. At least on the bright side they'll have this all ironed out when it's released in America.

I hope

Ouch. I guess most of us here though aren't affected and can just hope it will be fixed by the time game is release in our regions.

Well didn't they also not even make enough of the games?

The last two generations have given Nitnendo some self esteem problems.

It's like this one friend i have. In highschool when he'd have a party he would invite 4 times the people he wanted to come because he thought 3 out of 4 people would blow him off.

Come party time damn near the entire senior class would show up along with some underfreshman. Yet party after party he made the same mistake.

Doesnt this happen with all big online games? They are usually a little lagy and/or unusable the first couple days/week and after that it is smooth sailing? I would bet around 100k got their copy today if not more. And over half have tried going online already. So yea...thats a lot of people.

so the games been out a few hours and this guy has tried it, made his mind up, rated it and wrote an article about it declaring nintendo as making the wrong business decision.

I love internet Journalism me like

It'll get fixed.

Kotaku's always temperamental...get used to it...you tend to ignore the biting sarcasm and harshness after a while.

As long they get the online working smoothly soon, I have no problems.

Actually, I'm wondering if this IS the reason that Brawl was delayed in America. Lets face it, what on earth is it that would make them need to delay the English versions of Brawl until March, but still be okay with releasing in Japan already?

I think nintendo decided to use Japan as the test bunker for Online Brawl, they can judge how well their servers are handling things with the smallest expected audience to get a feel for what type of load they can expect, and be ready to work out kinks and purchase additional equipment for when when it releases in America and Europe.

This isn't the norm in online games. Halo 3, CoD4, Burnout Paradise, Unreal Tournament III on the PS3 all worked when I first played them on thier respective first days. (I played my friends PS3 when UT3 first came out) But here's to hoping that they fix it for the american release.