Nintendo’s online infrastructure has never quite been up to snuff, though the 3DS has taken a few ginger steps in the correct direction. At an analyst Q&A at E3 2011, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata explained that the company is finally ready to deal with a concentrated online offering.
“I think, in general, the online environment is changing quite rapidly,” Iwata began. “So, what I have come to feel lately is that the idea of saying, "we are going to create this style of online structure and that we would like you, the developers, to fit into the online structure that we are creating" is perhaps already out-of-date.”
“So, I think that, going forward, the question is really to what degree Nintendo can create a more flexible system for its consoles,” he stated. “And, what we found at this point is that, as we discuss the online structure with different publishers, the things that the different publishers want to do are in fact seemingly rather different. Our current direction is how we can take the desires of the third parties and create a system that's flexible enough to enable them to do the types of things that they might want to do.”
Nintendo’s also realizing that it needs to support current methods of communication, like Facebook and Twitter. Sony’s PlayStation Network and Microsoft’s Xbox Live already have support for both social networks in various applications.
“As for social networks, after examining the penetration and adoption rate of social networking services like Facebook, etc., we've come to the conclusion that we are no longer in a period where we cannot have any connection at all with social networking services,” Iwata explained. “Rather, I think we've come to an era where it's important to consider how the social graph of the social networking services can work in conjunction with something like a video game platform.”
It’s good to see Nintendo beginning to keep pace with the time. The Wii U looks to bring the company’s knack with innovation to the console infrastructure players have come to expect from the more expensive HD consoles.
