Nintendo Co. Ltd. said on Tuesday it would establish 1,000 WiFi hotspots in Japan by the end of 2005 where owners of its DS portable game machines can play games with others online for free.
The company is planning a similar service for overseas markets, aiming to expand sales of the DS and protect its leading position in the handheld game console industry from Sony Corp, which recently launched its own handheld machine.
I have yet to play anyone head-to-head on either my DS or PSP so I don’t know how vital online gaming is for handhelds, but having specific hotspots for the DS could be a bad thing. Why not just allow any wireless network to connect?
If Sony can get an online networking system setup for the PSP they may very well take major chunks out of Nintendo’s handheld marketshare.
Free Nintendo only hotspots make perfect sense to me, especially in a country where free hotspots are rare. If I read the article correctly, it doesn’t say that Nintendo DS wouldn’t be able to use standard(802.11) signals as well. So it’s a win-win for Nintendo DS owners.
Actually I think it’s more of a lose-lose situation. If free-wifi hotspots are rare where you live where I live they are almost non-existant (they currently exist in some shopping malls and key tourist areas but will soon be a payed service, and they don’t work very well).
If Nintendo will make free DS hotspots then the users of other countries and regions will feel “cheated” out of a service they supposedly already payed for with the console, they shouldn’t try to be different.
I hope they won’t do a similar thing for the PSP honestly otherwise I might not get it at all.
When it comes to communications and ports, stick to the standards please, don’t re-invent the wheel.
I doubt anyone will feel cheated if some service is available somewhere else and not where they live. For example, much more games are available for any console in Japan than the rest of the world: Shouldn’t you feel “cheated” since you already payed for the selection when you bought the console?
They’re not depriving people of service, but introducing a new one. Or are you suggesting that they shouldn’t even bother since they can’t cover 100% of the world and make it free to everyone (including competitors like PSP)?