Iwata “not currently satisfied” with Nintendo’s Online Offering

In an Investor Relations Q&A session, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has noted that Nintendo are “not currently satisfied” with their online offering.

“I have heard commentary that people feel that Nintendo’s online functionality is behind the others or is lacking in some ways. And I can say that we are not currently satisfied with the online efforts that we have made so far, and we are working at ways to improve those,” Iwata says.

He also makes the excellent point that not every single game that Nintendo makes should be offering an online mode:

“On the other hand, I do not think that online functionality is something that we should be devoting resources to for every single product. Instead, I think that Nintendo’s ability to create an offline experience that feels incredibly unique and compelling is a particular strength that we have.

“Going forward, what we will continue to do is to evaluate the individual products and experience that we’re creating on a product-by-product basis, and make a decision as to whether or not it’s more important to devote resources to making that offline experience more fun and compelling for products where that is going to be the most important element of the game play; and then for products where it is going to be more important, to add online functionality and make that online functionality robust and compelling.”

Is this the step towards proper online support from Nintendo? I have no doubt that if they wished to do so, Nintendo could have an online system as robust as the other consoles. However, it seems unlikely that Nintendo are massively concerned with this, as their games tend to focus on local multiplayer fun. Still, any improvements to the idiotic friend code system would be greatly appreciated by Nintendo fans.

Via EDGE