Mario Strikers Charged: How to Do Online (The Wrong Way)
"What the flying fuck are you talking about?"

James:

Hello
I bought Mario Strikers Charged (US) and so did my friend (UK version) after it was stated that while random matches could just be played with people in your region, you could add friends from any region in the world to play against, there may just be some lag issues.

Well whenever we try to add each others friends codes, both of us just get Incorrect Friend Code errors. What's going on?
Regards
James

Nintendo Tech Support:

Hi James,

When playing ranked (random) matches online, you'll be matched up with people throughout North and South America (including the surrounding countries). While it is possible to enter Friend Codes from certain other regions, attempting to play a Friends Match with other areas will likely lead to unsufferable latency (lag). In addition, the Friend Codes from some regions will not match the required format for
North American Wiis, and players will not be able to enter them.
Nintendo recommends playing against people within the same region.

Nintendo of America Inc.

James:

Hi,

So am I understanding this right, Nintendo have made North American Wii friendcodes purposefully incompatible with Europe and other parts of the world? Does that mean Wii will never have _REAL_ online play, only with people on the same continent? Sorry but this is just incredible, please tell me this is just poor online implementation and future games will have real online play.

Quake came out 11 years ago, had more complex requirements for network play and was able to be played online with people across the globe with reasonable latency and on 56k modems.. there is no reason on earth that a modern console should not be able to do this.

As it is now my friends will be importing Mario Strikers (if they bother buying it at all), which I know Nintendo doesn't like but when this sort of thing is pulled on the customers who is to blame.

Regards
James

Nintendo Tech Support:

Hi,

It's interesting to note that you can take a computer monitor that's sold anywhere in the world and use it with any computer anywhere. One computer program will work with any monitor.

However, if you take your TV to another country, you'll see nothing but static. Therein lies the problem. The Wii has to work with TVs around the world that are designed using technologies from the 1930's
and 1940's. When a game is designed to look its best on a PAL TV,
that game won't work on a Secam or NTSC TV. The graphics programming is not even close. It's like trying to listen to FM radio stations on an AM radio. The Wii that's sold in Europe is not the same as the one that's sold in North America.

I hope this information has been helpful.

James:

Hi,

Well online gaming has nothing to do with TV Resolution. I would imagine the Wii SDK is able to output to NTSC and PAL relatively easily, in fact PAL versions of Wii games contain the ability to output to NTSC if the region bit is changed. The only factor that would even effect games potentially, is a difference in frame rates (25 vs 29) however this does not effect the actual game and only the amount of video data the card has to send to the TV. A developer does not create a copy of a game for PAL then have to recode the entire graphics engine for NTSC, this has never been the case apart from maybe 20 years ago.

Online gaming requires the clients and servers to adequately transfer relative data to and from each other. Wether its a PC game, arcade game or console game this does not change. Other companies, Sony with the PS2 & PS3 and of course Microsoft's XBox, have no trouble allowing gamers all over the world to play with each other and in 99% of the time location affects ping to a very small degree, that it is not a factor. If a game is properly programed and the internet structure it is built upon (XBox Live, Nintendo WFC etc) is good, then the amount of data being sent should be optimized and allow for a decent experience with a standard internet speed.

For instance my friend located 30 miles away may have a ping of 30 while one in France may be 90, this is still so small that it does not effect gaming, and a friend 20 miles away with a different ISP may end
up having a 150ping, distance is not such a large factor that Nintendo should be going out of its way to prevent its customers from playing with their friends online.

Quake 3, 8 years ago, could handle what, 32+ players, moving in 3D space at will, each round of fire being tracked by all 32 players' clients and the server. The amount of network data *should* be far far
greater than a simpler game like Mario Strikers, yet hundreds of thousands of people played with each other all over the world on far inferior networks and hardware than we have today.

The only reason I can think of as why Nintendo would not be capable of having decent online play is a greatly inferior service or not nearly enough time and effort put into development of a working model. It is
interesting that EA has decided not to use NWFC for their online games but their own system, again perhaps because of Nintendos lack of decent service in this respect.

I understand it is not your job to implement one, but maybe if enough people show their dissatisfaction with the current poor state of the Wii's online offerings then your company will take it to heart and
provide the customer with a better system. Most people do not expect the level of quality from Nintendo as XBox Live, it is a paid service after all, but at least providing the simplest of online capabilities
found in games for over a decade would be a start.

Kind Regards,

James