Latest Review
Racing
Latest Reviews
Screenshots
First Looks
Previews
Features
Interviews
Pay-to-play Mario Kart Wii online? Nintendo to introduce subs
peripherals
Published: Monday 25th February, 2008 | Author: Steven Williamson
Products: Wii
Companies: Nintendo (All Nintendo content)
Platforms: Wii
External reviews: Nintendo Wii
printer friendly layout 
discuss in the forums 
email to a friendAdvertisement
We're off to play Mario Kart DS online, for free.
Nintendo has announced that a new subscription scheme will soon be launched on Wi, that will charge consumers for using selected online services.We presume the Wii Pay & Play system will charge us for playing online multiplayer titles and we've got a strong suspicion that it will probably launch alongside the highly anticipated Mario Kart Wii.
Takashi Aoyama, group manager for Nintendo's network administrations group confirmed the scheme at the Game Developer Conference and said that the system will be a way of ""collecting fees for some services [that] will allow us to adapt flexibly."
The charges will be levied on a game-by-game basis and costs will vary depending on the titles.
Our inital reaction to the news was one of disappointment, as we hoped, rather foolishly perhaps, that Nintendo would allow us to play online for free. However, until the company has laid their cards on the table and revealed the subscription model in full we're trying to stay optimistic that Nintendo won't rip us off.
In the meantime, we're off to play Mario Kart DS online, for free.
Copyright © 1998 - 2010, HEXUS.net. All rights reserved. Terms, conditions and privacy information.
HEXUS® is a registered trademark of HEXUS Limited.
My HEXUS
IE7 Search
Firefox 2 SearchHottest items
Latest Poll
Do you use HDTV for gaming?
Headlines
Press Releases
HEXUS.community :: your right2reply
I'm a sucker for anything Mario Kart related... I can still see me paying for this :(
Awesome... get the beers in bud, you'll be seeing alot of me over the summer :)Quote
At least when you pay for Xbox Live you can access the online features of any game. Im guessing Nintendo will start to have subs for each game.
And the online interface is of a poor quality, Sonys is better and freeQuote
I imagine your source here is Aoyama's recent interview, and while I guess you could read it this way..it seems crazy. Unless i've missed a critical statement, he doesn't state that Mario Kart will be a pay to play game, and doesn't even hint at that?
This is actualy a very positive thing, as it allows subscription based games - allowing MMORPGS to come to the wii (think PSO), and more importantly, it opens up downloadable content to all publishers. This is not possible at the moment as Nintendo has no charging structure open to 3rd parties, hence we have no downloadable tracks for say, GH3. Once Nintendo has launched a pay-to-play system however 3rd party developers will be able to use it to give us this sort of content - so extra tracks for GH games, extra cars for racing games, extra maps and so on.
I would put money on Nintendo not charging us to play their biggest games - they might have "enhanced" offerings that will cost money, but it would be a stupid idea from a business POV to charge for simply playing the majority of their games..Quote
Reply