[InclinedPlane]

They are the better part of an entire decade late on this. And now they have to compete against entrenched competitors with that much more development, improvement, and network effect accumulation in their favor.

To be honest, I sort of wish Nintendo would just give up making consoles and stick to making and release games for other systems.

[schraeds]

The Wii had much success in the market without much if any online presence. Nintendo has always been precautions of online due to their younger user base, but obviously they need to be in that space.

The good new for Nintendo is that its not Millions (xbox live or PSN) vs Zero, Nintendo has millions of consoles out there, and Wii U will probably sell millions of consoles as well, especially with the added value of an online network.

All Nintendo needs to do to catch up in the online space is sell a bunch of consoles.

I for one, am glad to see Nintendo fight the good fight. The world doesn't need any more Nokia's or Palm's.

[betterth]

How many people are going to want a WiiU when their iPad and iTV do similar things... they best price the WiiU extremely competitively! But how can they release a quality touchscreen controller without it costing bank? Controllers WITHOUT a screen, but still full of sensors already cost consumers $40-$60! Add in that screen and all the bits to power it... how can this controller cost less than $100/pop? How could they sell a multiplayer budget family console with $100 controllers?

People vastly underplay the importance of cost in consoles. Family game developers will target any platform families use. An expensive WiiU will finish the job that an expensive 3DS started -- it will kill Nintendo.

[InclinedPlane]

"All Nintendo needs to do to catch up in the online space is sell a bunch of consoles."

Selling consoles is not synonymous with people using their online service. Moreover, there is no guarantee that even Nintendo will be able to sell a significant number of consoles.

There are several huge competitors in online gaming currently, with more competition arriving and maturing every day. XBox Live, Steam, and Battle.net all have tens of millions of users and offer a robust set of features: social networking (friends lists), online game purchasing and digital distribution, online multiplayer and grouping with friends, text and voice based chat, achievements systems, etc.

Digital distribution and selling of non-physical items have enormous profit margins and low per-item operating costs. They are clearly the wave of the future for all software, especially gaming, yet Nintendo is only just now barely even flirting with the idea. "Catching up" to Steam and XBL doesn't just mean achieving the same number of online users, it means achieving the same level of revenue and the same level of brand credibility from the rest of the industry.

[mkr-hn]

All Nintendo has to do is add online play through this network to the next Mario game.