Nintendo and the Online Fiasco

I haven’t posted much in a while and a couple of recent things done by Nintendo have happened that I wouldn’t mind having a good rant about. The two things are related to their online services and the public reaction to them. For those wondering, yes, I’m talking about the Pokemon Bank and the recent new that Nintendo will be dropping their Wi-Fi connection service for the Wii and DS.

I’ll start with the Wii and DS BS first because while I do have an argument for it, it’s much weaker than my argument for Pokemon Bank and them charging money for it. So what’s the news? Nintendo has announced their online service for the Wii and DS will be dropped by May. Now this shouldn’t entirely be a surprise, as older consoles tend to drop their online components over time. Yes, Nintendo dropping it a little over a year since the WiiU’s launch is rather quick, but there are some things to consider. 

First, the WiiU is struggling and Nintendo is needing to be tighter with their money at the moment. One thing to cut is their expensive online service that isn’t bringing them IN money. After all, online services are a giant money pit that has kept the Xbox Division of Microsoft as their least profitable division since…pretty much its inception. And Sony’s Playstation division isn’t fairing all that much better, though I think we can blame that on the PS3 being too fucking expensive right out of the gate.

Not to mention the number of games on the Wii that actually utilize online multiplayer is a rather short list, and I’m only talking about titles that people have actually heard of outside of Japan. Speaking for myself, the only games I have on Nintendo devices affected by this are Super Smash Bros Brawl, Pokemon Battle Revolution, Pokemon Diamond (I think), Pokemon White, StarFox Command, Metroid Prime Hunters, and Mario Kart Wii. There might be others, but these are the only ones I can remember if they even had an online mode or not. Of all these games, I played ONE match of Smash Bros online, and it was rubbish because the game was so laggy it was like both of us were teleporting the entire fight. And, on top of that, I played maybe one match in StarFox Command, and that was so long ago I don’t even remember if it was fun. 

You know me, I’ve never been one for playing games online. If the internet connection doesn’t disappoint in quality, the people you play online with almost certainly will. Now, granted, I’m in the minority because everyone else is more of a “social butterfly” who enjoys playing games with other people. More power to ya, but now that your online service is being taken away, who’s the one still enjoying the vast library of single player games, GameCube classics, and Virtual Console games without being affected by this online service shut down? Well… this guy. Because those are the games I play.

Here’s my thing, Nintendo’s former online service wasn’t great. I think it’s good their shedding it for their sleeker, more up to date, and faster Nintendo Network system. It’s like when Xbox Live on the original Xbox evolved into what it became on the Xbox360. Yeah, we might have lost a few things in the shift, but ultimately, you can argue things got better for the Xbox owners… assuming you’re fine with paying $50 a year for an online service you can get for free on the WiiU or the vastly superior PC. 

Oh, right, I guess that’s a segway.

Another complaint I’ve been hearing lobbed at Nintendo recently is the notion that paying $5 a year for the Pokemon Bank is absurd. Apparently the online Pokemon storage is something we’ve had before for free and here we are being scammed like chumps by Nintendo and their greedy horrible ways. And we thought EA was the scum of the Earth. Whine! Whine! Bitch! Moan! Pout! 

While, yes, the initial gut reaction I had was that this seems rather crass, I’ve been doing some thinking on the subject  and have concluded that not only is paying $5 a year not that big a deal, but it is actually probably the best deal for off-game storage we’ve ever actually had realistically speaking. And here’s how I’ve come to this conclusion.

Let’s start by stating that, yes, we’ve never had online storage before. We’ve had off-game storage before, but never online. I was being facetious earlier, but that was the point. Ahem. Anyway, the first attempt (in America at least) for off-game storage was, obviously, Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Stadium 2. Yes, from the most basic aspect, this storage was a free service… with the price of a $50-$60 game attached. Now, yes, you get a full-fledged game (sort of) with it, but if all we care about is the price of the storage service, we are realistically paying $60 for that in one go. That’s roughly TEN TO TWELVE YEARS of using Pokemon Bank. 

Also keep in mind the original Pokemon Stadium games had their limitations too. Namely, they couldn’t transfer anything past generation two. This is where Pokemon Colosseum enters the mix. It had the off-game storage as well, but with a catch. It wasn’t so much storage as it was copying the Pokemon, and it would only copy them from ONE game cartridge per file on the Colosseum game. So you also could transfer Pokemon to it and transfer them back… there was eventually ANOTHER game called Pokemon Box which was an actual storage service.

The problems with Pokemon Box, aside from being another game sold separately for a retail price of $20 or 4 years of Pokemon Bank, is that it had a very limited release. You could only buy it in Japan and in Pokemon Centers in America and Europe. For America... this was only New York City, which is half-a-country away from me and not a cheap trip to make just to pick up a game. Not to mention the fact that while Ruby and Sapphire could make use of the game’s service bascially right away, you had to be at certain points in the game for Emerald, FireRed, and LeafGreen. In the case of the latter two, post-game content. Not that big a deal, but a little annoying. 

Keep in mind all of the previously mentioned methods also required linking the GameBoy or GameBoy Advanced to the main console (N64 or GameCube). This required those bulky transfer-packs (I think the only use they ever really got) or those GBA Link cables that were used for Pokemon and Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventures. Which also meant you had to buy extra equipment to make use of these storage features, adding an additional cost as well as physical storage of these devise the other 95% of the time you won’t be needing them for any other game ever.

Let’s move on to the Wi-Fi era with the Wii and the DS (too soon?). Here we got ourselves generation 4 of Pokemon with Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum as well as the first Wi-Fi Pokemon game on consoles, Pokemon Battle Revolution, and I think the first Wi-Fi game to be on the Wii. At this point, now we’re done with the extra equipment needed transfer and store these Pokemon. But, much like Pokemon Colosseum, Pokemon Battle Revolution had no actual storage, as it was only copying data of the Pokemon from the game. The real storage wasn’t until the separately sold Pokemon Ranch, a WiiWare download for the price of $10. 

For those who don’t remember anything about Pokemon Ranch, don’t feel bad. It was a poorly reviewed game with bad models, boring gameplay, and the only worthwhile feature was the storage process. But, much like the previously mentioned Colosseum and Pokemon Box, this only worked for this specific generation of games. I couldn’t bring my Gen 3 Pokemon into these games from their Gen 3 games. I had to transfer them into a Gen 4 game and then place them here.

Likewise, this didn’t work with Gen 5 games, so I had to transfer them from Gen 4 to Gen 5 manually… which required me to have access to a second DS. Keep in mind that when I got my second DS specifically to do that, I only paid $40 bucks for it. But that’s besides the point. The point is that there was no cheap alternative for transferring your Gen 4 Pokemon to Gen 5 games if you had to buy a second ENTIRE GAMING DEVICE simply to continue playing with the same Pokemon from the previous game you bought them from.

And as for storage for Gen 5 Pokemon, we have nothing. There was no Generation 5 equivalent to Pokemon Stadium, Pokemon Ranch, Pokemon Box, or Pokemon Bank. Those Pokemon could only be stored on your DS game and that was it. (Another reason why I’ll tally Generation 5 as the worst one thus far). 

So, after all of that I just listed… you mean to tell me you feel justified in complaining about a $5/year price on an online storage service for your Pokemon? Let me tally up the costs spent to store Pokemon from previous years and transfer them over. While I’d like to count the Stadium games to help further prove my point, it was IMPOSSIBLE to transfer those Pokemon to generation 3, making their existence limited to those old GameBoy Color games. Ergo, they will not count for now.

So we have the price of Pokemon Box (originally $20, now on Amazon.com for a minimum of $120), we have the GBA-to-Gamecube cable ($15), Pokemon Ranch ($10), and a second DS to transfer Generation 4 Pokemon into Generation 5 games (estimated $80 when Black/White were launched). This brings us to a total of $125 over the course of ten years of Pokemon games. Um… remember earlier when the price of Pokemon Stadium ALONE was about the same price as having the Pokemon Bank for ten years? This is equal to have the Pokemon Bank subscription for TWENTY FIVE YEARS. 

That’s a YEAR LONGER than I’ve been alive! So… exactly how is the Pokemon Bank actually ripping you off when it is providing off-game storage and the ability to transfer seamlessly into future generations of Pokemon games? Because I’ve done the math. I may be an English Major, but I think the math here speaks for itself and that this is literally the best deal when it comes to Pokemon storage and transferring since the creation of the series. Go ahead and continue to hate on it if you must, but you are clearly wrong here.  

To conclude, I’m not defending what Nintendo’s doing and saying they’re a beacon of goodness in truth and should not be criticized for their decisions. By all means, criticize. If you don’t agree with their actions, vocalize that disagreement. But at least pick and choose your fights. You want to say they are assholes with their IPs and products, not letting fan-made content exist, I agree. You want to say they shouldn’t uproot their old online service in favor of focusing on the much better online service they’re trying to migrate too, I disagree. Because improving on broken and outdated technology is the right thing to do. Telling fans they can’t have fun making a fan-made (clearly inferior in function) and free game of Pokemon or Mario is wrong because it discourages fans from enjoying the IP in new ways and exploring new concepts. And it also quashes creativity in budding designers.

But, yeah, I’m done arguing, I think I’ve made my point. See ya next time.