A particularly disturbing notion...

[Smooth Criminal]

I had just picked up May's edition of GI (Game Informer) from the mailbox today and came across an article in their "Loose Talk" column that just unnerved me. Apparently, the president of SNK (a third party company that developed the ever-popular Samurai Showdown series) just announced that Nintendo is restricting companies from adding online functionality to their Wii games---be they Virtual Console or just regular games---until after 2007. GI had also mentioned shortly after that Nintendo itself had officially announced only one online-compatible title, and that was Pokemon Battle Revolution.

I wonder, in lieu of this recent news, if Brawl's online functionality is in jeopardy. I know "Loose Talk" is just that---rumors---but sometimes these rumors have some substance to them. Plenty of us can cite examples from Sakurai himself, where online was sort of a "up in the air" kind of thing that they haven't sorted out; with this announcement, they might push the game back until '08 or throw Brawl out there without an online component. If the latter happened, I can't really say that I would be apathetic if the latter happened; I think it would kinda suck, personally. The possibility of playing people online is just too awesome. However, pushing the game back kinda sucks too---I don't wanna wait until next year to play the next installment of the franchise.

So, what do you guys think about this recent development? Do you honestly think there's any substance to this claim?

Smooth Criminal

 

[X-x-Dyce-x-X]

Absolutely not, Nintendo is publishing the game through a 2nd party company. I'm sure they're only restricting this to 3rd party companies for now. And even so, that may mean that Smash won't come out until after 2007. (...god ****it.)

 

[McFox]

They're restricting it for 3rd party companies, not for themselves. Mario Strikers and Brawl are both currently planned to be online.