senortaco said:
You're complaining more about the fact alot of these things are friends (friend codes) only. I think what you are harping on has alot to do with Nintendo's conservative nature. Their biggest concern with an online community, like you envision, is kids and safety. Thats one thing nintendo will never compromise on is providing a "fun" and "safe" experience. Like Reggie mention, they do have a vision for online community and it will be different from their competitor.
sidenote: Why is it that Animal Crossing gets beat on for only having marginal improvements, but games like Call Of Duty, or Madden doesn't seen to raise the same ruckus lately? ...I call bullshit. |
I know that safety is important. As a father of small children, I know I would never want a videogame to put them in harm’s way. However there are a lot of ways Nintendo could have allowed a lot more social interaction without compromising safety. They could easily have only allowed preprogrammed "safe" text response options and sound clips when interacting with non-friends online, but once you know and enter their friend code, you could have full voice chat and keyboard support. The whole point of City Folks was that it was meant to be a social game and going to the City should be a big part of that, and that is where the game is severely lacking. The whole point of Wii Music is meant to be creation, and why did Nintendo neuter the creative aspects of it, the supposed rhythm games allow you create original music and share it via DLC, but this one that is meant to be truly creative does not.
The reason Animal Crossing gets beat on for having marginal improvements is because there is so much room left to improve considering the times. Call of Duty 4 was already on the cutting edge when it came out, and marginal improvements made to it in the next iteration are only meant for it to be kept there. Madden is a sports game which already pushes the hardware, all you can really do us make it a bit more realistic each year, tweak the controls, and update rosters. Since there aren’t that many improvements left to be made there, there isn’t as much criticism for the lack thereof.
I have liked Nintendo games, and still do when they really put some effort into them. Twilight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy, Brawl, and Mario Kart Wii are examples of good updates to existing franchises, and Wii Fit and Wii Sports are good new IPs. City Folk and Wii Music are unfortunately not.