Post: #1

It's probably something most of us could have predicted, but Satoru Iwata made it clear at Nintendo's recent annual shareholders meeting that there are no plans for a paid membership to access the arsenal of online features to be available on the Nintendo Network for the Wii U. Iwata did concede that he isn't totally opposed to the idea of paid subscriptions, however he believes that making the service available to everyone will result in the spread of word of mouth and thus greater hardware sales.

The rest of the session was apparently light on any significant news. Iwata mentioned that Nintendo has been dispatching its employees to other companies in order to grow relationships with third parties, citing the collaboration with Namco Bandai on the next Super Smash Bros. as an example. He also noted that there aren't likely to be any further 3DS hardware revisions in the foreseeable future, as offering to many different models may confuse consumers.

Written by: Mike Glubish

Post: #2

Even if we were already expecting free online out of Nintendo, these are really good news, confirming it. Now, I'm just hoping for there to be games which make the online fun and as addictive as that of PSN and XBL.