Nintendo Announces Wii Pay and Play

[codenamelenny]

Gdc08: Nintendo Announces Wii Pay & Play

Today, during a GDC presentation, Nintendo's Takashi Aoyama announced a new expansion to Nintendo's Wi-Fi services called Wii Pay & Play. Aoyama explained that Nintendo will begin "collecting fees for some services [that] will allow us to adapt flexibly." In other words, by subsidizing additional, unnamed service and feature costs to consumers, Nintendo feels they can explore new concepts and channels.

He added that it was a Nintendo initiative to avoid misleading consumers into thinking they can buy games that can be played entirely free when they cannot (whether or not this implies an initiative to begin charging for multiplayer content was unclear). To aid in a clear cost presentation, the blue WFC logo will be joined with a similar red logo featuring the line "Pay & Play."
While we were offered no additional details, we understand that the red stands for danger.

Is this for MMOs?

[boffo]

No idea. I saw that article earlier and realized that it really explains nothing.

[Red-Blue]

Paying for online usually means having a plethora of online customization and options.

In other words, it's a trap.

[Dax]

Fuck you Nintendo.

[Icemage]

What a waste of air. Details or go home, please, Nintendo.

I don't mind paying for a service that's worth it, but I'm going to laugh them off the stage if they want to charge me to use voice chat or something similar.

[Aeron]

I'd gladly pay for a No FC online Service. Just not $10 or over.

[codenamelenny]

It's for extra content in games.
GDC 08: Takashi Aoyama on paying for Wii downloadable content - Nintendo Wii News - QJ.NET
Probably like new levels and songs.

EDIT:nevermind, the two aren't related.

[2pro4show]

As long as they don't charge for any sort of online feature in games that should already be there for free, whatever.

[valius]

I was at that lecture today, and yes, he didn't mention any details about the Wii Pay-to-play, except that it would continue emphasizing the "simple" and "comfortable" ideas for family/n00b usage. No Q&A session, so I didn't get to ask about the storage and SD card issues I had in mind.

The one cool thing is the upcoming Nintendo channel that will play DS demos and watch vids/trailers of upcoming or existing games. But the DS demos has me concerned that Nintendo will still not let us use external storage... although I don't use enough DLC for SD storage to begin with.

Maybe they'll surprise it as at the May launch of WiiWare, and I'm interested to see what the services they'll provide will be.

He also mentioned about the TV Listings channel coming to Japan, but it'll be a while before it reaches the US.

That's pretty much it, unless you want to hear about the various considerations that had to be made for the Wii, a console "for all" so to speak.

[Leonidas]

This is clearly to expand Nintendo's online gaming capacity in general.

And I bet it costs half as much as XBL.

Looks like there'll be one less reason to bitch about Nintendo shortly.