Satoru Iwata has admitted that Nintendo's restrictions on interaction via Wii Connect 24 could be improved and has said the company will be working to improve the service in the future.
"First of all, I don't think the current system we have with friend codes is perfect," he said in an interview with GameDaily.
"However, if it's an online world where you can get access to anybody without any restrictions, I as a father do not feel like allowing my daughter be engaged in that kind of world."
Iwata said that the company felt it was important to create a world free of harassment for those who have never experienced online videogames before.
"So we will be studying this," he added, "on an ongoing basis in order to improve Nintendo's own circumstances where people can freely and safely enjoy the communications through the net."
No s**t Sherlock. It's awful. It's so incredibly obstructive to add a friend to your system, as well as serving no purpose (you have no idea if they are online or not), that I often question the point.
Throw in a lack of voice chat, and really, what difference does it make if you play with a friend or a stranger.
Understatement of the decade, I still dont know/care what my friend code is, the Wii is a waste of time online, plus evertime I do go online with it, I have to reinstall my network settings so I can get my 360 and PS3 to work online after. SORT IT OUT NOW!
Well done, absolute genius. This guy sure earns his pay.
But here's the thing. He wouldn't be happy about his daughter having free access to the world? Here's an idea - don't let her play unsupervised. Or put parental controls that only allow her to play with other parental controlled consoles.
Why are adults having silly restrictions placed on them rather than putting those restrictions on only children? I'm 28 and have no kids, so my experience is that of a totally dumbed down and entirely unfriendly system where you need an external method of communicating to get online with friends.
On XBL I can find someone in game (and I know their rough age group because of voice chat), decide we get on well, send them a friend request with a personal message so they know who it is and they can respond in kind. The inability to even send a message to someone is my biggest problem with the Wii. There's no way of knowing if someone could have typo'd your code or doesn't remember where they know you from. Sending them a "Dajmin has sent a friend request: Hey, you might have seen me on the CVG forums. Add this person as a friend?" message would solve most of the problems I have with the code system.
Out of interest does anyone actually know of a worse "Friends" system than Nintendo's? I think they got the prize for most innovatively stupid friend system.
My other pet peeve is their download "blocks". Why can't they just use kilobytes? Does anyone know how big one nintendo "block" is in kilobytes?
I'm so glad they're looking into this - just like they've been looking into a solution to the storage problem...
I don't mind friend codes as much as everyone else does, but my main issue with the system is that games have a seperate code to the Wii itself. Who's idea was that?! It's completely retarded. I would love to be able to see who on my friends list is online though.
Understatement of the decade, I still dont know/care what my friend code is, the Wii is a waste of time online, plus evertime I do go online with it, I have to reinstall my network settings so I can get my 360 and PS3 to work online after. SORT IT OUT NOW!
I would say that is more of a problem with your network setup than the wii. Why on earth would you have to have different network settings for one or the other? Mine (and all of my friends) wii just connects up using wpa and the 360, my pc, my laptop, and my phone all connect with the same settings.
I'm so glad they're looking into this - just like they've been looking into a solution to the storage problem...
I don't mind friend codes as much as everyone else does, but my main issue with the system is that games have a seperate code to the Wii itself. Who's idea was that?! It's completely retarded. I would love to be able to see who on my friends list is online though.
I agree. If they are going to have friend codes (and I can sort of see their point) then just have one friend code for the system rather than different ones for different games. I have to say though I don't see too much danger in online gaming for kids although the racism, sexism and swearing on Live is some of the worst I have ever encountered! I do try to report everyone I hear doing it but I am not sure if they end up getting banned or not. I certainly would not want my kids hearing it.
But then they could hear just as bad on TV or simply walking down the street - you can't censor everything. And let's be honest, young children don't pay any attention to language. If they don't understand a word they will either (at best) ignore it or (at worst) ask what it means, and if you then tell them it's not nice and that they shouldn't use it, that's what parenting is all about.
I hear it a lot too, but I usually play Teen or Mature-rated games, so I wouldn't expect young kids to be playing it to be at risk.
Nintendo is full of maniacs. I'm starting to become more and more convinced of this.
Friend codes are a freaking Red Herring. If you can use the Internet, you're open to predators. I'm sure that it's a hell of alot easier to prey upon innocent children when they're in a chat room or games forum.
I'm so glad they're looking into this - just like they've been looking into a solution to the storage problem...
I don't mind friend codes as much as everyone else does, but my main issue with the system is that games have a separate code to the Wii itself. Who's idea was that?! It's completely retarded. I would love to be able to see who on my friends list is online though.
I agree. If they are going to have friend codes (and I can sort of see their point) then just have one friend code for the system rather than different ones for different games.
This is what annoyed me, after exchanging Wii numbers with a few friends - I'm then told to do it for EVERY SINGLE online GAME I buy, and it's this tedious process that is killing the Wii's online potential.
Mario Karts takes it to the extreme, asking each individual Mii to enter and exchange their own specific codes. However once you're in Mario Karts you can see whether your friends are online, so why can't they adapt this to the main Wii Chanel menu in an update?
perhaps they could create somthing like a gamertag or psn id but with more restrictions.
as he says he soesn't want anybody he doesn't know to be able to talk to his daughter maybe they could make it that only your friends are allowed to talk to you and if you are playing online then you can only hear what your friends are saying in a game. also they could make it that only your friends can send messages and stuff.
its really not that difficult now is it nintendo...
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No s**t sherlock. How can someone in such a high position take so long to realise this?
