Iwata Leaks ONLINE Info

Earlier this year at the annual Game Developers Conference, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata revealed plans of bringing their Nintendo DS online by the end of the year.  It was also made apparent that the same online service could eventually be the one which will bring Nintendo’s next home console, code-named Revolution, online as well. Despite Iwata’s persistent secrecy, he apparently revealed some additional information to Japanese site, Impress GameWatch.

Details are slim and Japanese oriented but a lot of what Iwata mentioned can be translated into other territories.  He stated that over 1,000 retailers across Japan would be equipped with Nintendo Wi-Fi hotspots.  Reason being is that Nintendo wants to make their online service “seamless” and available to everyone.  Iwata went on stating that connections could be made at home as long as an Internet connection is at hand and a Nintendo approved Wi-Fi adapter is utilized.

It should be noted that Nintendo plans on making their online service completely free of charge.  Nintendo wants to provide users the comfort of knowing that they won’t be charged a monthly fee (ala Xbox-Live) unknowingly. Nonetheless, while this means that Nintendo will not charge to connect to their online service, it doesn’t mean that third parties are prohibited to charge for their own specific products.  The following is a comment that Iwata made about this subject:

"Since we are hoping to make this a widely used component of the system, we have decided not to charge monthly fees for our games using the service…   …However, in order to encourage third-party software makers, we do not plan on banning monthly subscription fees. We will be establishing a subscription system in which users will not have to worry about being charged without their knowledge."

While most of the specifics about the online service are being saved for E3 2005, Iwata did mention that they plan to assign the service a proper name at the event.  On intriguing piece about the name is that, as of now, Iwata called it Nintendo Wi-Fi and not DS Wi-Fi or Nintendo DS Wi-Fi.  Perhaps this is a hint that the Revolution will, in fact, be a part of this upcoming service as well.