I don't miss it. So they talk to them on myspace then? Or skype or whatever? Sorry, but thats not a point. A point would be that they hear strangers or can meet strangers that are dangerous. If the harm is done, it is done already on the PC. If parents would be scared about something like that, they should not give their childes access to the computer. There is the harm done, not on the Wii. It would be still a save system.

Or why can we exchange message on the Wii? Isn't it the same? You have to know the person you want to talk with first. There is the system secure, but not elsewhere on the Wii? Sorry, you don't have a point :P

i dont regard online as being as important as MS and Sony make out, out of all my friends who own consoles, about 10% play online and some don't even have the internet. Investing tons of money into something only a small amount of people can use doesn't make much sense, in the same way Nintendo didn't make the Wii HD.

By next generation there will be a lot more HDTV and broadband users out there worldwide, especially as streaming HDTV is becoming more popular. I expect Nintendo's next machine to have a 'home', a marketplace and who knows what else.

The current Wii online services such as Opera, news, weather and the VC seem to be aimed at the non gamer, or the ex gamer wanting to relive the classics.

We have to remember the whole we = wii thing is aimed at local multiplayer, not swearing down a microphone because you just got shot by someone you couldn't see as their internet is 5x faster than yours.

Because it offers an upstream path. I don't claim to agree with all the design decisions Nintendo has made, but it is starting to look more and more like they have really planned everything around the key concepts they want to push. If I don't understand it, it doesn't mean that there's no logic behind it.

@Ben: I forgot to comment the last part of your previous post. Well yes, if you think it that way, unless it's linked to the Mii you're using. I was meaning that the code works as a general friend code for all the games. Not as a global profile. That's why i was wondering the "friends channel" in my first post in this topic. It would basically be an online community, without the pixel world. I see that kind of channel possible. The difference between message board and voice chat is, that the messages are saved to Nintendos server. Sure the voice can be saved too, but i don't think we will see a voice chat before Nintendo figures out a cost efficient way to save large amounts of audio. But that's hard to say, swearing kids are really a turn-off, since you can add random people to your friends list.

What is upstreaming about it? I understand the upstreaming concept, and there is no upstreaming. The upstreaming goes from no online to online. That doesn't excuse that the online is missing some basic features (like a global friendslist). Actually the current system is more complex (and therefor "upper tier" if you want so hard putting it in those 2 categories) and my system would be "down tier". As I said, a lot of people just repeat what he is saying, not thinking for themselves. Make it easier is never bad. One friendcode for all games is easier. No reason to defend it, Nintendo just did a bad job there. They do a excellent job somewhere else, but there, they did a bad job. Thats not that problematic, if they see and fix it over time. After all everyone (oh yes even Nintendo) does make mistakes.

And what I ask for is not hard to implement, and  nobody can tell me that even a soccer mom find it easier to remember one code (instead of 3) and doesn't find it nice to see what their friend is playing right now, so she can join it (if she wants to) right away ;)

I don't disagree with you about it being nice if there indeed was a global friends list, and I believe (or at least I hope) it will come. But the concept of lower tiers and higher tiers does not have to do with how easy to use the online is, it has to do with how it relates to the consumers. And I suspect a good portion of those who are new to gaming are perfectly happy that they have a few games where they can test the waters, so to speak, the ability to play online with friends at all is new to them. Upstreaming is when they realize online gaming is fun, and wonder if not more games could support it, and perhaps if it would not be possible to have an easier way to control your friends and so on. We are already there, have been for years, and probably all of the younger IM generation is there also, but the older crowd might not be.

Anyway, all this is speculation as we don't know what the real plans of Nintendo are. I just don't find it plausible that they would make this kind of "mistake" in a product that cost millions and millions to develop, and which by all accounts is designed extremely well around a vision of what it will be. There are just too many places in the design process where, if there would not have been compelling reasons to do it this way, somebody would have said: "Hey, let's have a global friend list." 

It is easy: They don't concentrated on that part, they don't expect the success. You can see that because the online servers of MKWii and Brawl are full and laggy at the high times. 50% of the sold wii in America are online, Reggie once said. Thats many. I am sure they didn't expect their online to be sooo sucessfull. They didn't expect their Online shop for games to be sooo successfull. Even nintendo now sees the problem with the disk space (they said it). They will find a solution. Why is so less space in a Wii (1 gig flash doesn't cost that much more than 512 mb, but would help a lot)?

Because Nintendo didn't see it comming. At the time the Wii launched their thought: 512 MB? More than enough! If they new how the system would get used, they would have put in more (how much would that cost? 1$, 2$? Nothing, I would say!)

It is the same with online. It is their first online system that get that heavy usage, and they truly didn't see that comming. Thats all, and thats fine ;) And I said the word "down market" and "up market" doesn't fit, I only said, if you have to put it in one of those two ;)

And where do you live that people up to the 40 doesn't know how a friendslist work? Or a phone book? They have it arround them all the time! Their mobile has a friendslist, their telephone, their email solution, their IM. At least in my country people in that age do now their way arround such things ;)

 Your right, bring back the VirtuaBoy and PowerGlove.  Follow Them Blindly.