1/21/2012

Nintendo will be dragged into the digital age kicking and screaming....

Ah Nintendo. A rare company that seems to be forward-thinking in a lot of ways, except when it comes to the ever encroaching digital space. They brought the industry back from the brink with the NES, they pioneered things liked connectivity. The DS, which everybody thought of as gimmicky and yet it's the second-best selling system of all time. And of course there is the Wii, which ushered in (for better or worse) an era of casual and motion-based gaming.

Yet when it comes to online, Nintendo almost seems downright draconian in their approach. Wiiware has pretty much been an afterthought, and their whole "Friend Code" system is just bizarre and nonsensical. They are finally making a couple of steps though. The 3DS at least uses a simplified Friend Code (one per system instead of one for every single game), but online support is still pretty weak at this point, with many games having multi-player, but not online multi-player.

At least they are finally trying to catch up in one area: Demos. Demos are something you can regularly access on either the 360 or the PS3. For some reason, Nintendo, while perfectly willing to do in-store demos for some of their biggest titles, has barely dipped their toes in as far as providing anything to try at home. But in hopefully what will be an ongoing-thing a slew of them are set to arrive on the 3DS starting with the first big title of the year, Resident Evil : Revelations, which is out now. Hopefully this is a sign Nintendo is really ready. A nicer sign would be demos of all their Wiiware titles but at least this is a step and also a hopeful indicator for the online future of the Wii U which Nintendo has claimed will have a much more robust online system.

That's it for today, hopefully I'll be able to get in another post tomorrow, until then, here's your TRAILER OF THE WEEK: Casa de mi Padre

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