Super Smash Bros. Brawl Online Issues
Maybe it is because thousands of people are trying all at once to get their Brawl on, but online connectivity for Super Smash Bros. Brawl is having some issues. Reports are coming in from all over of connections being dropped or unplayable lag. It seems that either Nintendo didn’t have enough servers to cope with everyone hopping online at the same time.
Personally, I didn’t hop online yesterday, and maybe it was worse then. But when I got on today, I connected to ten different games no problem, with only minor lag in one game. Of course, I suck, so I promptly lost all of them. I’ll be working on my Brawling skills. So far, everything is looking good and clear to me, but today is a school/work day, so maybe not many people are on. If problems continue to be reported I’ll have to say this is a failure for Nintendo, but I assume they’ll sort things out. Online gameplay is working smoothly and effortlessly in Japan, so it is probably just too few servers. In that case, Nintendo can easily grab some more, problem solved. Likely, they won’t even have to, since it is doubtful that they’ll even have that many people all trying to get on at once ever again.
Nintendo’s online capabilities really have yet to be put to the test. Microsoft’s Xbox Live systems have had hundreds of times more traffic that Nintendo has ever received. If the Wii’s online functionality is proven to be weak it would be a huge blow to Nintendo. Because of this I think that fixing these problems will be a very high priority. So far, I don’t think there are any underlying system problems that cannot be fixed so I expect that everyone will be able to get their Brawl on without problems soon, one way or another.
Xbox live is a really good selling point for the Xbox 360, only problem is that it costs. It would be nice to see more online multiplayer games coming from Nintendo, unfortunately, Nintendo has announced that future online games might be pay-to-play. Sigh. Oh well, we can’t have out cake and eat it too. Or can we? The Playstation 3 has great online support and — as of now — it is free. Watch out Nintendo, free = good for casual gamers.
I don’t understand the move for Nintendo to pay-to-play online games, it seems to miss their normal casual target. I suppose we can still home that Nintendo never implements it. In the meantime, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is free to play and fun. Stop reading this article now and get your Brawl on.
