there was already a mp3 market before the ipod. read the Steve jobs biography. he ties on how he liked the idea of the walkman and mp3 player but it was missing ease of use which bore out itunes.

all of apples products have been existing things done badly but were berry lucrative markets. they follow market trends just not in the average way.

I would have thought Nintendo would have come up with something more orginal sounding than something so similar to the Playstation Network.

I just hope this means a messaging system will be integrated into your 3DS friends list.

Yeah, Nintendo is definitely not doing what was done in 2006, because in 2006, there was no Playstation Network (I remember it starting in 2007) and Xbox Live was in it's infancy. It'd be more like 2009-2010 :3

Anyhow, this is exciting news. I'm particularly excited about having the option to download full retail games
Aaaand, someone in this thread said it's not possible or likely. The proof was in the pudding even before this announcement.

Oh.. And I'll be downloading Smash Bros. 3DS.. It'll probably be the only full retail game I download, actually.

Which means that Nintendo is 2-3 years behind MS and Sony. Considering they were about 5 years behind at the start of 2011, yeah, I'd say they're catching up pretty fast (assuming that they continue this trend of expanding their online services).

Well the most interesting thing is what kind of services can include nintendo in his network, services beyond the classic services that ms and sony gives.

if the wii is anything to go by than none.

what?

I'd hope not. Unless you're cool with it shutting down for months at a time.

going by recent online history nintendo won't really have any major non-gaming features.

what the hell???????

calling it like i see it. currently online between the three are

Microsoft>Sony>>>>>>>>>>>Nintendo
i expect by the wii u it may still be
Microsoft>Sony>nintendo

The more similar it is to the PSN, the better (minus the outages).

They should call it Nintendo Channel. :3

Fixed. PSN is terrible, and the PlayStation Store is a complete mess (cluttered and unorganized).

Who cares which is better? If it's functional, and it works, then I'm all set. I think people are really glorifying Xbox Live a bit tooo much.

Tone it down :3

Have you used the PlayStation Store? Everything is too cluttered and unorganized. Most of the time you have to search for games manually, and you can't filter your results by publisher, release date, genre, etc. (you can do all that on the Wii Shop).

PSN is almost perfectly organized, so I don't know what you're talking about. You're also forgetting that PSN is free, unlike Xbox Live.

must suck to have low standards.

seeing as they haven't said anything about transferring your wii purchases to the wii u is reason enough to be worried.

I liked the Wii Shop Channel layout. If you complain about not being able to find a certain game, or how it's such a "mess", you should probably toggle with the language settings or figure out how to read.