Wii Friends Codes, Not Perfect

Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo has gone on record with his thoughts of the Wii friends code system. He’s a father, with a daughter, so he’s letting his own personal judgment get in the way of a good community built game system.

In talking about the open access of the Internet he said, “I as a father do not feel like allowing my daughter be engaged in that kind of world.” He’s more inclined to protect his children from the dangers of the Internet and random (often insulting) people by requiring a 1:1 paring with real friends.

For many gamers the Wii friends code system is far from perfect. It’s so far from perfect its a barrier to entry and any form of fun on the console platform. Nobody is against protecting their children, a parent will be the first to admit they’re desire to protect their kids over all else, but clearly someone isn’t thinking outside the box on this topic.

The only way to protect your children is to enforce a large numeric key which you must hand deliver (or e-mail) to your friends in order to play? We’ve got more creative enforcement in child safety on our TV sets using the VCHIP which allows parents to password protect certain television programming.

It’s not hard to consider a tiered security setting where the adult must unlock the system for online access, by either requiring a credit card to provide evidence you’re old enough or simply asking for your birth date before beginning online registration. Once you’ve done that you can set a management password to control online access.

A parent should have a management console within the Wii to manage sub-accounts on the console and grant certain access. Using a send/receive friend system through the console like Xbox Live would easily be implemented where the parent can (if configured) require all inbound/outbound friend requests to go through them as a proxy.

Other access grant/revoke features:

  • Online Gaming: Lock children down to playing online on specific games or full restrictions to disallow online play.
  • Online Friend Gaming: Allow children to only play online with friends in a private game.
  • Voice Chat: Allow voice chat with friends and anonymous gamers with the ability to restrict all voice chat or force mute on non-friend gamers. This limitation can be enforced in text-chat as well.
  • ESRB Rating: Limit game play to specific levels of ESRB ratings.

It’s clearly possible, with a tiny bit of infrastructure, to limit your child’s online presence without adding more barriers than needed. The console should ship with the highest level of restrictions so a gamer parent that doesn’t want to deal with the complex barriers has instant protection, but a parent with a little patience can setup their child’s online play to be toned exactly as needed for their age.

As it is now, the barriers cause any adult gamer to become frustrated and move towards other online avenues such as Xbox Live or Sony’s PSN. Nintendo’s so closed minded about their implementation that they’ve limited the network play to being nothing but a nusense and continual aggrivation with entering dozens of pin numbers (“friends codes”) to play.

For great ideas on how to design a network infrastructure some top executives should keep an open mind, jump on Sony’s PSN and Microsoft’s Xbox Live solutions and see how they do it. Once you’ve played Halo with a bunch of swearing and cursing twelve year old children you’ll be able to figure out a few tweaks and restrictions you can add to voice chat to make the experience much cleaner and friendlier.

It feels as if Nintendo hasn’t put any effort into exploring the idea of a layered pretection system in a community atmosphere. Child saftey can be enforced at many levels and handled differently for varying age groups. Don’t be lazy Nintendo, put some time into it.

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NXE, Theme Packs, Avatars and ImpressionsNXE, Theme Packs, Avatars and Impressions

We’ve had some time to look through the New Xbox Experience (aka Fall Update 08) for the Xbox 360. There are some goods, bads and oddities about the latest updated firmware and thought it was a good time to share.

The most important feature we’ve found with the new console software is the addition of Netflix. The ability to play software in the “Instant Queue” is excellent, fast and done with high quality. If you have children this may be one of the must-have product features; add a ton of family movies to the Netflix Instant Queue and your children will have hours of entertainment.

We’re not telling you to sit the children in front of the TV for ten hours, but it proves to be a great way to get quality entertainment without bombarding them with commercials telling them to tell you they need new stuff. This is especially true around the holidays where kids are watching more commercials than actual episodes of Sponge Bob Square Pants.

We were a non-Netflix household and recently bought into their second tier program so we can watch instant shows and get one DVD at a time. The NXE has up-sold at least one new Netflix customer, great job Microsoft!

Avatars are another “feature” to the new console software and it all seems very Wii like. Months ago we were kidding about how they’re cloning some features of the Wii but in reality, it’s more a clone than we thought. The sound track while creating your Avatar feels almost ripped from the Wii in terms of cute settling sounds and silly uplifting music. This isn’t your dad’s console anymore Timmy.

The outfits to dress your Mii, oops, avatar in are very limited and you’ll no doubt see a lot of sameness in dress and overall look to the avatars. But, now Microsoft is showing us how to differentiate ourselves by purchasing virtual items to make our avatars cooler. For 250 Microsoft points you can now buy a Ninja Blade theme pack which includes wallpapers and avatar items. Yay. No, seriously, we’re supposed to buy this crap?

The NXE also supports a full system re-design, out with the blades in with the… Cover Flow? The NXE now acts more like iTunes, the iPod and the Apple OS X more than ever. You’ll breeze through your game list, NetFlix Queue, Friends List and other features as if it were Cover Flow album art. Cool in some ways, frustrating in others.

In some ways, item lists are the fastest and easiest ways to view things. For instance, prior to NXE you could tell who was online in your friends list within a few seconds. Now, with NXE you’ll troll through your friends list four-by-four flying through the “art” of your friends avatars hanging out next to a “room” mimicking the game they’re playing. Cute, no doubt, but not an effective way to see who is online.

The in-game console pop-up windows are much cleaner and easier to browse using a mini-blade style approach to finding information. This new re-design allows you to get more from your console interface while in-game than ever before.

The one neglected feature, in my humble opinion, is the “spit and polish” of the new interface. They took some aspects of OS X and some aspects of Wii and mixed them together to make organizational changes, some good and some bad. However, the interface is very flat, drab and boring. There is no real glossy shine to anything, very little in textures for backdrops and windows fixtures and very anti-vista like when it comes down to drop shadows and beauty. A little more glamor, gloss and reflective surfaces would have made the interface look a bit more next-generation in terms of cool factor.

Overall, it is what it is. You may like it, hate it or just learn to live with it. Some features will be easier to browse around while others will require a bit more work. We’ve noticed about a 10 to 12 second pause between shopping screens for add-ons, arcade game downloads and such, hopefully that will change in the coming weeks. It stands out as a bit different from the competitors, in some aspects, while paying tribute to some of the cooler features of other products.

The Netflix addition is the best part of NXE, but that could have come available without a full user interface redesign. Your thoughts?

Wii Will Beat PS2 in Sales, PS3 Like GameCube?Wii Will Beat PS2 in Sales, PS3 Like GameCube?

If the sales continue as they have been for Nintendo and their little white Wii, you’ll be looking at the top-dog for overall console says–best selling console ever. This would push Sony’s PlayStation 2 to the second spot of awesome console victories over the last seven generations of gaming hardware.

gamecubeBefore Sony fans unite to comment storm, remember, the PS2 had a lot of great games and continues to have games coming through for its console. People are still debating the life-span of the Wii product line, regardless to overall sales figures while the PS2 no doubt had a long live and still continues to have a long life, heck 30%+ of gamers still play the darn thing. Sony has been able to utilize the PS2 and its profitability to glide through the initial PS3 sales slump and get the momentum growing for their current generation console.

Yet, some folks are comparing the PlayStation 3 to the GameCube in terms of sales performance.

“During the first 26 month period, the PS3 sold 6.79 million units in the U.S., compared to 6.75 million GameCubes during its first 26 months. While the GameCube finished a distant third last generation, the console was profitable for Nintendo.” (Kotaku)

Before you get out your flame pens, this analogy wasn’t constructed by me, I’m merely the messenger. Again, to defend Sony (read: put on  my flame retardant outfit) Sony’s console is slowly building momentum, depending on who’s statistics you read anyway, and their product will eventually become a profitable sale. The GameCube was profitable as well but boasted “dozens” of great games to play while the PS3 obviously is pushing to become the hardcore gamers console of choice with top tier graphics, blu-ray playback and a free online service. GameCube was really just a cube that played some games, a one-trick-poney as it where.

It still feels odd to say Nintendo is winning and Sony isn’t winning (I avoid the term losing to yet again to kill the flames) and… Microsoft?

Microsoft, in my opinion, is in the best possible situation. They’re not being targetted as the number one console and being critizised for holding such a position and they’re not dragging near the bottom to be poked fun at by the industry and bloggers around the world (mainly, the United States.) They’re stealthing by with good sales compared to the last generation console by “improving its fortunes.” The Xbox 360 “sells 18 percent faster than its predecessor, according to NPD figures, and even turned a profit, something the original Xbox never did” according to VentureBeat.

The PlayStation 3 has many years ahead of it and we’re sure plenty of gamers will eventually buy into the console because the technology within that black box is designed to last many years. Considering only 30% of the United States is rolling with an HD-TV it’s not surprising they’re not jumping at the opportunity to own a PlayStation 3. Why is the news all over the PlayStation 3 and talking trash about it? Sony was the console to beat when the PlayStation 2  reigned the industry, to see the console go from #1 to #3 in a single generation is shocking but not new; we saw Nintendo suffer the same fate when the PlayStation originally launched.

But, is the PS3 like the GameCube? There are too many factors to make that comparison, especially considering the growth in the game industry, the growth of storage and video technology and the general acceptance of video games. Hell, you can buy video games at convenience stores in the United States now, the industry isn’t the same as it was in 2001.

Please discuss…but don’t shoot the messenger. 🙂

MumboJumbo Making Luxor 3 For WiiMumboJumbo Making Luxor 3 For Wii

Casual gamers will be glad to know one of the big publishers of casual games will be publishing Luxor 3 for the Wii console, perhaps this will be one of many to come. While large console based developers like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts and others are trying to make casual games for the Wii but MumboJumbo’s a pro in the industry.

It’s going to be hard to compete with a casual game publisher like MumboJumbo if they decide to produce more casual game titles for the Wii. Most folks associate Nintendo’s latest generation console with casual gaming in an ever growing casual market and now it’s time to bring aboard many casual game companies that know the inner working of casual gamers.

MumboJumbo has plenty of great Nintendo DS titles, so the Nintendo relationship is obviously strong. Now, we’re hoping to see them dominate the Wii console and make those other big publishers work for their casual gaming money.

(Thanks, CasualGamerChick)