Smash launched with more stable online than MS or Sony games

Sony's Driveclub seems to have been a catastrophe in terms of its online features, Microsoft's Master Chief Collection's matchmaking remains busted a week later, while meanwhile Nintendo has launched not one, but two games this year (Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros. for Wii U) that seem rock solid in terms of basic online functionality from day one.

guys, what the hell is going on

Hmmmm!

The talking points of the gaming press seem to always say that Nintendo is worse when it comes to online than MS or Sony.

Hmmm!

This is true if you ignore a bunch of other games and reality in general. Destiny came out for both platforms and worked as promised but never mind that.

Don't forget the fact that they also both run at 1080p and 60fps. (More hot video game talking points.)

That's it, I'm done working for the day. Time to go play some Smash.

Yeah.

@planetfunksquad said:

All but one of the people who've replied to him said they've had minimal issues...

Nintendo's online sucks compared to MS's Xbox Live or Sony's PSN.

343 made MCC and not sure who made Driveclub, not MS or Sony.

Someone will complain about it and call it a trainwreck/disaster, just wait...

@zombie2011: Microsoft owns 343 and Sony owns Evolution. The reality is more granular than broad statements of "LULZ M$UCKS AND PHONY," but those are both first-party titles.

Not to take anything away from Nintendo, props to them for finally moving in a better direction with online stuff, but that's a much smaller sample size both in terms of number of games released with online functionality and the online player population. While there are big failures like Driveclub and Master Chief Collection, the majority of games with online features work reasonably well right out of the gate or at the very least are largely fine beyond the first 24-48 hours or so of servers getting hammered.

I really hope you aren't implying Nintendo's online is good. It's not.

Also there's like 15 Wii U's out there. Easy to have good connections when there are so few. >_>

I can't believe we've gotten to the point where someone can say "This video game is functional on launch! Holy shit!" and it's not sarcasm. I don't like the direction this metaphorical ship is heading.

About 95% of what is said above is completely true; Sony and Microsoft didn't "make" the games mentioned, the overwhelming majority of their games have been rock solid, Nintendo's online infrastructure is still broadly acceptable in 2006, sample sizes are disproportionate as hell, and so forth. I was more intrigued by how perverse this feels to have TRUE NEXT GEN SYSTEMS getting exclusives with busted online features while completely insane Nintendo in the corner gets it right, within the span of about a month. More a shower thought than a flame war. Case and point, I'm inches from pulling the trigger on a new PS3.

I would also point out that Sony and MS requires a paid subscription to play online.

@chaser324: Small sample size or no, MCC is a game that it's fanbase had every reason to expect it would function on day one. Or day seven. It's a not insignificant failure.

It's worked fairly well for me. There's been laggy matches that have sorted themselves out. And I've had laggy matches where everything seems to be about a frame or two off. I've had one error occur but so far I've been surprised at how well it's held up.

That is not true. Mario Kart is 720p (not that it matters, game still looks outstanding).

It's really not as bad as it's made out to be. At least on the WiiU. I tried to play Smash online on the 3DS and it was completely unplayable. Mario Kart on WiiU on the other hand. Two thumbs up!

@extomar said:

Not that I have a problem with Nintendo, or even like Destiny at all, but this basically sums up my thoughts on this topic. People have (in some ways understandably) been finding reasons to say the industry is somehow dieing (it's not ya'll), but really when they do that they ignore 80% of releases this year to do it.

I mean, good on Nintendo for making solid games (although I heard the online for both was busted on launch but I can't confirm that so whatever), but that isn't really an indicator of anything other than Nintendo starting to get it's shit together with online.

Played a bunch of For Glory 1on1 last night and for the most part, it's great.

Let's calm down here. We're talking about Smash Bros, not World of Warcraft. At this point, it should be expected that any game of this scale that comes out should work online immediately out of the box. The fact that this is noteworthy/surprising enough to warrant a thread says more about Nintendo's online infrastructure than the game functioning does. Also, those two games might have been/be messed up online right now, but when you consider all the other games that come out on XB1 and PS4 that work just fine, they're outliers. After all, as numerous people have pointed out before me, Destiny launched pretty much completely fine, and that game is entirely online. Hopefully this is a sign that Nintendo is getting their online shit together, but unintuitive store pages and my completely unplayable copy of Smash 3DS seem to suggest otherwise to me.

I think he's talking about first-party games.

Why have people been saying this recently? Destiny was busted following launch. Remember all those weird error codes (centipede, bluebird, a hundred others)? I couldn't get into the game for three days because the servers were janky, and even after that I kept getting dropped mid-game for like a week.

It blows my mind that Nintendo hasn't had any issues yet. They're supposed to be the ones who don't know how the internet works, right?

Has the derision of Nintendo's online offerings ever really focused on poor stability of any one game or another? Seems to me like the major criticisms have usually revolved around how dated and lacking their online features are on a system wide basis. I mean, shit, your digital purchases are still tied down to the hardware you bought them for. They are still a full generation behind on some of this stuff.

343 tried to update netcode from three games on different engines and one game that didn't have online capability in the first place. This is why Halo Anniversary just put a few maps into Reach, bolting netcode onto a game that was never meant to have it can't be easy.

Apart from that, keep in mind that Nintendo has fewer players online and less stuff going on.

Sunset Overdrive has been flawless.

Except it totally did have online multiplayer on PC, and it was rad.

@planetfunksquad:

They are using Halo CE (PC version of the first Halo) in the Master Chief Collection, which certainly did have online capability.

I'd be hesitant to say that 343 did anything to the netcode either, even Halo 2 might have been kept the same as it was perfectly functional on the Xbox 360 until they shut off the servers.

Yay, Nintendo released a couple of games that work decently online! (not like smash on 3ds wasn't a mess online or anything)

I wouldn't know about how well the online is. My connection is pretty garbage at the moment so I've been getting lag in the butt.

@extomar: Destiny had a ton of connectivity issues that they had to try and patch out. I personally went through the whole zoo of animal code names for the various issues.

Well maybe because Nintendo had two-three years to work on a single Nintendo game and the online capabilities of the console barely exceed the Wii's...except for driveclub...10 years!!!

I played several matches online yesterday and it took only 5 seconds into the first one for the lag to kill it for me. It's not even spikes or anything, there's just a general lag between me hitting a button and something happening. I feel like it might be noticeable for the uninitiated, but as somehow who has compared the online capabilities of fighting games for years, and has played a great deal of smash in my time, I can say that the online really sucks and feels sluggish compared to offline. Also got disconnected during one match.

That said, I still have hopes that Nintendo can patch it to make it better. I mean they just put in some conquest mode patch and why go to the trouble if your networking is dogshit? I only hope that Nintendo isn't under the impression (like many Japanese fighting game developers are) that everyone in the world lives as close together as people in Japan do where you don't get lag as bad due to everyone being located close to the server.

more stable online than MS or Sony games? why, now there's a quality observation. suck it "MS and Sony games".

I don't know...why do people say this Destiny had a bad launch? I guess...? Okay...?

I don't deny that there were problems but to say it was bad or unplayable shows how intolerable the consumer has gotten to anything less than "pristine launch". Actually this is a good thing because it keeps vendors honest where I only object to the suggestion that nothing has launched correctly where I look at Destiny and saw it worked.

ps. Snail is probably correct that the point is we narrow our vision to "just first party games" but then I remember games like The Last of Us and TitanFall launching fine as well. So...shrug?

Can't imagine as many people trying to play Smash Bros online as there are trying to play Halo online.

Whats with the need to point this out?

I can't quite wrap my head around a scenario where this isn't simply a Nintendo employee, or someone who just wants to see how many Driveclub/Sony or Halo:MCC/Microsoft "fanboys" come rushing to the rescue.

They suuuuuuuuuure did.

Not sure why this was bumped, or what the point of it was in the first place.