Well there are multiple factors at play here.  Firstly people pay for their XB and PS online and they have much more online experience at this stage, compared with Nintendo, so the expectation is that the online should be smooth. Nintendo rightfully gets a hard time about their interminably slow adoption of online so I think people are pleasantly suprised, particularly when Smash's gameplay is so dependent on things running smoothly.

You're point about Destiny/COD/FIFA relates somewhat to my previous point. I don't think online issues for recent games on XB/PS has anything to do with particular technical challenges of getting these new games to run smoothly online, plenty of games this year aleady have, it's just the they were rushed out the door, incompletely tested and lacking polish in order to hit a deadline, namely Black Friday.

Its nice that the games online is running well but I dont consider that a technical feat (for a fighter) and the cheap shots at Microsoft and Sony arent classy. The way I see it the sole point of that article is to reinforce the "Nintendo == Quality" rhetoric. Fighting games (which always work) aside it conveniently ignores titles like Horizon 2 and Sunset Overdrive which have solid online features just to paint "those other companies" in a bad light based on two cherry picked (and high profile) games to make a biased point.

its always smooth without dedicated servers

Didn't Brawl have terrible netcode?  Something about that game meant I never managed to have a stable online match with it (and I don't believe it was to do with the Wii's wifi chip, since I played Mario Kart Wii online just fine)

OT: regardless, if Smash WiiU is better then that's showing big improvement, which is nice.  Maybe the Namco coding helped.

I think thats only true if the game uses dedicated servers. If the game uses peer to peer networks then server load should not be an issue as most queries would be basic searches, all load would be on the host. With that explanation though you can understand why games like Battlefield 4 (64 players + destruction) and Halo (4 different multiplayer engines with up to 16 players) are more likely to run into problems than Smash. Forza Horizon 2 features 12 player simultaneous online and there was no fanfare or articles over that.

So again its good that the game works but I dont think this article is necessary but rather poking shots at the competition.

Thank youNamco. Even exchange for wat nintendo did for their services :0

I still don't understand how Nintendo's online is apparently the worst.....

I have no annoying problems on my Wii U nor 3DS.
Actually, basically almost always smooth. Except the COUPLE times in Smash 3D I had lag but very very tolerable and nothing major.

Well... I am not trying to say that it is a technical feat but rather this is how games should launch. Smash Bros online isn't like the zomfg innovative online that every game should follow but out of the Big IPs that did get released this year out of the Big 3, Nintendo games seems to be the only ones that work properly both online and offline for all their games. And it isn't just Smash, when MK8 launched and it sold 1 million + in first week, the online had no issues either apart from some people having really bad internet connections which is of course, an issue with Peer-to-Peer.

And at the end of the day, Yes, FH2 and SO does have solid online features and so do some Sony games, but you are also paying yearly for those features so you expect that kind of service from Microsoft and Sony for every game, specially if its first/second party, yet for MCC and DC, that has been not the case which is ashame.

Once MS and Sony get their things together, MCC and DC will probably provide a much better online experience than SSB or MK8 will but the issue is that in terms of game launches, Nintendo still managed to have all their games work perfectly when it comes to online and they did it for free which is the key thing imo. People shouldnt have to wait 2-4 weeks to be able to experience the full game (specially if you are paying for the online service) and for Nintendo games, they didn't have to!

The Irony! XD

What? Do you know what you're talking about? There is no need for much server power in most online games, it is about data-transfer between all parties. Not much data is transferred for all of these games. A racer only needs all the info on current position and momentum of cars transferred, a shooter again current position, weaponry and shoots fired, a fighter needs again position and moves executed. That is all not much of data. Everything else is rendered on the client from these data. The server doesn't prerender something or so. More importantly though, for all three genres you need quick reactions, so latency is very important. That doesn't change, despite how much data is transferred. This is key to smooth gameplay. Latency is impacted mainly through the following: network latency (how long takes the data from player A to player B) and netcode latency (how fast can the game decode the data). That seems to be well enough for Smash, if people experience smooth gameplay. I can't judge, Smash isn't out here yet in europe.