Friend Codes — you hate them, we hate them, and I suspect that, somewhere deep inside, even Nintendo of America’s 10 story tall, fire-breathing President Reggie Fils-Aime hates them too. Nintendo gamers have had to put up with the annoyingly long and random series of numbers on the Wii, DS and 3DS in lieu of user names. Even the 3DS’ use of a single Friend Code per system rather than individual ones for each game is still an annoyance; albeit slightly less of one. When the company launches the Wii U, however, it will finally wave goodbye to codes in favor of actual account names.
Oddly, Nintendo has been tight-lipped about the Wii U’s online system. So much so, in fact, that this latest news actually emanated from the Ubisoft camp. In an E3 interview with MTV, Ubisoft producer Adrian Blunt mentioned that users will make individual accounts on the Wii U. In response to being questioned whether or not they’d be “equivalent to a gamertag on Xbox Live,” Blunt replied, “Yeah, exactly.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
There’s no telling precisely what sort of all-out internet pandemonium will occur as a direct result of this move. In spite of that, industry prognosticators are banking on the following, previously unheard of, phenomenon: gamers could actually start enjoying themselves while playing online Nintendo games. Welcome to the 21st century, Nintendo.
[Source: IGN]
Image via Destructoid.
