How things can change in an instant.

It’s no secret, in previous generations, Nintendo have suffered from a lack of third party support. The N64 was a good system, as was the Gamecube, but they basically both died from no third party games. Nintendo had 50 A+ titles to Sony’s 500 B titles. Walking into any store would find Sony’s (and in later years, Microsoft’s), games splattered all over the walls like the paintball cheat in your favourite FPS. Nintendo was given the small corner in the section, next to those Dreamcast games nobody asked about.

But coming up to the release of the Wii, Nintendo was gaining good ground on the third party front. As more reports and news came through (especially after E3), third parties were jumping onto Nintendo’s bandwagon. Hell, Ubisoft practically asked Nintendo for their hand in marriage. It looked like Nintendo was shaking their third party curse. Analysts predicted a successful 7th generation for Ninty.

But, we all know Nintendo’s secrecy. That wry smile and shake of the finger from Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata must be growing thin on developers. Nintendo never wants to be ‘one of the gang’, always going for originality and innovation over mainstream games that will be a hit. Look at the Wii; we still don’t have a release date. Come on Nintendo, there’s only so much we can take.

Why fix something that isn’t broken though? Secrecy and silence has long been a strength of Nintendo. While everybody was fawning over the other consoles, a few people wondered, what’s Nintendo doing? We investigated and realised: not much. But, this wasn’t a bad thing. Hinting at this and that gave Nintendo an edge that the other companies didn’t have: word of mouth. Case in point, the unveiling of the name of Nintendo’s next console, Wii. So, by now Nintendo has an established fan base and everybody on the edge. “What’s going on?”, “They must have something good planned!” E3 arrived. Publishers and developers went mad, praising Nintendo for their unusual controller and different approach to gaming. Remember the end of Trading Places? Lets say Nintendo is Bill Murray Dan Akroyd and third parties are the stockbrokers.

There is a downfall to Nintendo’s silent treatment though. With all their success they were having, companies weren’t getting enough information from Nintendo. Many companies have reported (except for Ubisoft, Nintendo’s love child) not receiving complete Wii development kits for some time. No dev kits to use, means no ability to make games, means no third party games for Nintendo. I can see a pattern forming here.

And now it’s coming back to haunt them.

Call of Duty 3 and Tony Hawks Downhill Jam are both set to launch on the Wii. COD3 was a surprise confirmation from Activision, with many believing the Wii wouldn’t be able to handle the game graphically. Activision didn’t care; they went ahead anyway. They even gave us an online multiplayer mode. Woo! A chance to steal some heat away from the FPS fan’s haven of the 360! And it’s online!

*cue violin*

But today, Activision has announced that the online multiplayer of COD3 has been cancelled on the Wii. Dammit. The ‘official’ reason was to expand on the unique (Wii controller) single player experience. (Yeah, because a longer single player section is going to suffice for losing a fantastic multiplayer experience). From Activision, “We wanted to clear up that the Wii version will not have online multiplayer, but is being developed to take advantage of the unique controls and provide an amazing single player interactive experience.”

Tony Hawks Downhill Jam is also getting no Wii multiplayer love. Tear. To date, not a single game from a developer other than Nintendo includes online multiplayer. Now that is really pathetic on Nintendo’s part. Wait up, it gets worse. IGN is claiming that several developers and publishers are saying that Nintendo isn’t letting third parties touch their Wi-Fi Connection libraries till next year. *jaw drops*

More bad news.. the internal speaker inside the Wii controller (I’m NOT writing Wii-mote) is also getting no love from anybody except, yep, you guessed it, Ubisoft. Only Ubi is reporting being able to take advantage of the unique function as of yet.

So all of this puts Nintendo at an odd position. It was all looking peachy for Nintendo. Public interest was up, the success of the DS was carrying over to the Wii and websites stopped slandering Nintendo and actually gave us some positive comments. The lack of no online multiplayer games from any companies except themselves, lack of dev kits and no one knowing how to use the internal speaker in the Wii controller is severely hurting Nintendo. Something needs to be done. Reggie, I’m looking at you.

Now that the COD3’s multiplayer mode has vanished, will Nintendo launch with any online multiplayer games, something that is sorely missing from their line-up?

- Aaron Kleemann