Great job comparing games in the past with no online....

Man it's crazy how the people ignored the online on the PS2, GC and the Wii... oh wait...

It's literally pointless to compare when online wasn't even avaailable.

My point is online doesn't sell games as much as people think they do and that a game isn't going to flop in sales because it has no online.

Depends on the game. Also, and I state again if Metroid Prime had online it would sell better it's a fact because of the popularity of FPS shooters in the US.

A lot of games cannot even have online mp because they are by nature single player games .

More and more on that list you have will be online because it's about time console games go online mor, I mean everything is done online but playing games won't follow? it will.

Everybody seems to miss the point where I said "Online gaming will keep going it is a good idea". You comment like I said "online sucks it's not needed", I agree online will be the future but I still don't see it being a must-have feature.

Also, have you played Metriod Prime muilt-player before, it sucks it really does. Prime is not a good mulit-player game unless it was co-op then that would be great but just a battle mulit-player wouldn't be that great for MP3, well it wouldn't be good if they did like the MP2 mulit-player. 

Great online games play about the same in single player.Take Halo, the single player game isn't much different from the online. It's a shoot-em-up game pure and simple. But Prime is a story driven adventure games where you find pieces to a puzzle to advance. It doesn't translate well into online mulit-player.

 I was thinking in more in terms of broadband, as I only know a couple of people who still have dial-up, and they don't play any online, all the people I know who do play online have broadband. I am frankly suprised people still mention dial-up (perhaps it's different in the States). Ok, I guess there probably is a fair amount of programming, but my point is (probably phrased it wrong there), it's not going to add several months and millions of pounds to turn an offline co-op into an online one, as the data is already there. So it shouldn't be a major issue to the developers, and therefore, it is pretty shocking if a game doesn't have it. I.e. some of the reviews of R:FOM criticised it because it had no online co-op, but as it had deathmatches, and it was an early game (where there were less people with a PS3, and therefore less online players) it didn't really hurt it. I seriously think that within 2 years, if a game doesn't have some for of online (most likely deathmatches or co-op campaign) then it will be highly criticised and lose sales. Perhaps now at the start of the generation where the majority of people (it's gonna take a long time before the total sales of the three 3rd gen systems add up to the 150mil+ sold last year) still have last-gen consoles, and therefore the online community is going to be small, but when say the three consoles total over 40million, then it will probably become a major thing.

I have played a lot of online games over the years and I really enjoy playing games online ...

With that said I don't play that many games online anymore because I don't have the time to memorize maps, learn and practice various strategies or techniques, or keep my 'skills' up to snuff; basically, I don't have the free time a teenager has to devote to these games and I find them to be frustrating to play. On top of all of that I get tired of being called 'ghey' (or usually something much worse) when I play games online; the racist, homophobic and generally disrespectful people in online games really annoys me.

I would like to see Nintendo produce more online games though because I think they might focus on things other than the 'elite' competition aspects of most online games. I think you could even have fun co-operative and "communitcation" based online games (Animal Crossing for the gamecube was described as a Communication game, I think it would be interesting if you could have all of your friends share a village and each player had a property in that village)

I'm guessing you haven't programmed, or if you have, you've never written network code. Network code is one thing I absolutely hate writing and that doesn't include any additional intelligent code to handle lag, cheating, or anything else that can occur over a network. While I doubt it would take millions of pounds to add network code to a game, I can tell you now, that it would definitely add a few months of time due to testing/development cycles.

Of course, with a lot of games these days built on 3rd party engines (eg Unreal Engine 3, etc..) a lot of this is already taken care for the devs, so when they lack it there, you are more than welcome to complain :P.

Edit: On a side note, I don't actually know what tools are given in the SDK, so perhaps writing network code for a console is simplified compared to other platforms.

Metroid Prime would NOT have sold better with online.  Metroid Prime Hunters was the worst selling metroid game and guess what it had?  Online multiplayer.

Here are my thoughts on it:

I'm a big social gamer.  I love playing games with friends, and because of this the Wii was naturally my first choice of game systems (no split screen in motorstorm really pissed me off).  However, I think online is a nice feature to have on SOME GAMES.  Not all games are set up for online style.  Metroid Prime for example is not fun as an online game.  Hunters proved that pretty clearly.  It's mechanics and play style just are not good for online play. 

Super Smash Brothers on the other hand is perfect for online.  SSB will never be more fun online than it is with 4 people in the room, but it's a type of game that will be fun to play with other people on the internet.  Shooters are more fun with online as well (though I hate getting called gay by 12 year olds in halo.  stupid kids).

Also, for those who think that Nintendo isn't moving towards more online gameplay, I think you are very wrong.  Let's take a look at the DS for example:

Name	Console	Publisher	Japan	America	Others	Total
	Nintendogs	Nintendo	1.63	5.24	6.75	13.62
	New Super Mario Bros	Nintendo	4.71	2.84	2.23	9.78
	Pokemon Diamond / Pearl	Nintendo	5.27	2.75	0.00	8.02
	Brain Training	Nintendo	3.62	1.72	2.43	7.77
	Animal Crossing: Wild World	Nintendo	4.38	1.38	1.76	7.52
	Mario Kart DS	Nintendo	2.41	2.49	2.05	6.95
	Super Mario 64 DS	Nintendo	1.14	2.16	1.41	4.71
	More Brain Training	Nintendo	4.54	0.00	0.00	4.54
	Big Brain Academy	Nintendo	1.51	1.05	0.81	3.37
	Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team	Nintendo	0.82	1.15	0.97	2.94
	English Training for Adults	Nintendo	2.00	0.25	0.29	2.54
	Wario Ware Touched	Nintendo	1.20	0.50	0.45	2.15
	Pokemon Ranger	Nintendo	0.77	0.72	0.62	2.11
	Yoshi Island 2	Nintendo	0.72	0.85	0.42	1.99
	Tetris DS	Nintendo	1.22	0.45	0.28	1.95

5 games

Now, obviously online doesn't make games sell.  Many of the best selling DS games have none, but Nintendo includes it in almost every DS game made recently.  They also put online in Pokemon: BR, Battalion Wars ii, and Mario Strikers Charged, for Wii.  Hopefully Super Smash Bros. Brawl will have it too.  So really, Nintendo may not be as commited to it as say Microsoft, but they are certainly making an effort.  It also is obviously not to the point where online determines game sales on console games.

Coding for online is probably a long process, though I abandoned my coding ways after throwing a weight through my wall during a late night coding session for my grade 11 project, so I wouldn't know from experience.

However, online does add replayability and extends the life of a game, provided it is done well. In general, that is what multiplayer does, and online allows those with no social skills or friends to join in with those who do and have a rousing game of... whatever. Neccesary? No, but good, almost always.

The best online play i had was with Halo 2 i would play hours with my buddies actually not really with people on line sure we would get invites to play and we would play with them. Yet strangely enough they had 2 tvs with 2 360's and would play against each other or with other. Also there was another 360 up stairs in addition to the 2 in the common room with more of our friends playing.

We play like 4hours straight after i would go study for an exam or something or go to practice and they would still be playing. That went on for over a year until Gears came out and Halo was dropped.

If anyone would play Halo we would say "you still play that ancient game"

I only think online works with racing games real FPS not Metroid and some sport games..........