MS have really been bad-mouthing the competition a lot this year.

Free is good. And in the case of PSN and XboxLIVE you still get some services for free. But by paying for a membership you get so much more. It is well worth it. One day you will grow up and realize the value of money well spent.

I think you need to grow up if you feel you can talk to me about growing up.  I'm guessing your parents pay for your subscription.  One day you will grow up and realise the value of having better things to spend money on than something others are offering for free.  I know there is no online experience that comes anywhere close to what I have had with Mario Kart so why should I pay for less?  I downloaded the Left4Dead demo and played online during my free Gold subsription and well it was nothing but a dead experience.  I tried CODWAW and the same thing.  Why I would see the need to pay £50 for that is beyond me. 

To be fair the money is nothing - I pay £70 a month for my satellite subscription but no one offers the same for free or even half the price.  But even though £50 a year pales in comparison well it isn't worth it to me at all and would rather give the money to charity or buy a game or take the wife out for a fancy dinner or buy a pair of shoes.  The list of things I would rather spend £50 on is endless. 

Also, have you guys heard? The Wii isn't a DVD playing platform! And it's white!

I've not once paid in my life for an online gaming service, or DLC. If something costs money, it has to be better than StarCraft on free Battle.Net. I haven't seen that yet.

I thought that Microsoft only insulted Sony every other second.

It must now be Nintendo's turn on the other every other seconds now.

You can't argue with their strategy though. They are about to reach a 50% marketshare.

In one thing he's right; online is the heart of 360.
Overall, Wiis online is better than what 360 has. Lives strength is, that everything is standardized.

About the patching, it definately is the worst thing ever. Only if the patch is for online feature, it's fine.

@Rubang: You're right. Payd service has to be better, since Battle.net isn't something you'd pay for.

And who was the one that mentioned Brawl online play? It propably uses low latency network, due to the games nature, when small lag becomes really visible.

Eaaasssyyy big fella (as George tells the whale having crashed on the beach...)!

What did I say? I said I played MKWii and COD:WaW online on the Wii and liked it. The single player is fine and the online brought something more. I was therefore happy and thought I would post it in this thread as I thought is was on topic (in regards to the OP's article).

And as your rightly pointed out, this is merley an "opinion" post. So you don't have to agree (whcih you obviously don't). But don't go losing yourself in complicated sentences included such things as "opinion if transcribed as fact"... I thought you lost all of your credit there as a simple "i disagree" would have suffised.

Art Vandelay

Well for me one of the strongest points of the wii is the Virtual Console, something that is much much better then offerings of XBLA and PSN, plus the Wiiware and i dont think any of those services would be possible without being Online Connected.

I seem to recall playing tons of glitchy rushed games before console patching became available...