Fils-Aime: Wii U To Offer Publishers 'Flexible' Online System

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime says the company's upcoming Wii U will offer "a much more flexible system" for online gameplay, allowing publishers to use their own preferred network solution. In an interview with Forbes, Fils-Aime said the online setup for the new system will "allow the best approaches by independent publishers to come to bear," without interference from Nintendo. "So instead of a situation where a publisher has their own network and wants that to be the predominant platform, and having arguments with platform holders, we’re going to welcome that," Fils-Aime said. "We're going to welcome that from the best and the brightest of the third party publishers." The NOA president resisted efforts to discuss the system's online capabilities in more detail, saying it would be "much more compelling" for further details "to come from the publishers than to come from us." Details about the Wii U's online capabilities were largely missing from the system's E3 unveiling last month, though Nintendo president Satoru Iwata also touched on the idea of a more open, flexible, publisher-driven system at an investor Q&A week later. "What I have come to feel lately is that the idea of saying, 'we are going to create this style of online structure and that we would like you, the developers, to fit into the online structure that we are creating' is perhaps already out-of-date," Iwata said. "I think that Nintendo's past console business has often included this idea of a set and fixed online structure. So, I think that, going forward, the question is really to what degree Nintendo can create a more flexible system for its consoles," he continued. Elsewhere in the Forbes interview, Fils-Aime said he was not worried about market confusion during the time when both the Wii and the Wii U are on store shelves, and mentioned that streaming Netflix movies to the Wii U's touchscreen controller would be "theoretically" possible.