We've known for a while that Mario Kart Wii would support twelve-player online races, but given Nintendo's less-than-stellar online record, we were a little worried about how smooth the online experience would be. Well, we're a little less worried now that the Nintendo UK web site has revealed some details of how online racing on the Wii will work.
Nintendo UK has updated its website with a walkthrough of Mario Kart Wii's online multiplayer options.
One or two players can connect to Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection from a single console, and then select from Worldwide, Continental or Friend pools of players.
Online race-types mentioned on the site are Battle, Grand Prix and Teamplay, with the game host selecting race settings while the group itself votes for a track.
There has been an update in relation to this article:
"In our original article, we speculated that players might be able to use a USB keyboard or at the very least the Wii remote to enter customized text messages. Not so, according to a rep for Nintendo of America, who contacted us today to clarify. Apparently, gamers will only be able to select from a pre-determined number of phrases that can be sent along as rudimentary texts before matches. Nintendo is clearly playing it safe."
@Just_Ben,Well we know that smash out sold MK in the US and Japan from reliable sources , and the only data we have on other sales is from one shady source. According to this Nintendo statement http://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/9ecTTNYePHMMnXqfuH789XA-56vcAQdi
"Super Smash Bros. Brawl: This action game launches March 9. With dozens of characters, settings, options and ways to play, it has something for everyone. The game includes characters from all across the Nintendo universe. The previous installment in the franchise went on to become the best-selling game of all time for Nintendo GameCube."
BTW, I didn't see you shorting this stock, pilias_simber ? IIRC, you said you will not comment on stock that you did not participate on ? Or did I mistake you with somebody else ?
@Just_Ben, First : I do not downbid you (somebody else do that). Second : VGChartz have erratic performance on their data. Sometime they are correct (+- 5%), sometime they are very wrong (+- 50%). Using VGChartz is almost the same as not using any data at all (I will automatically ignore data from vgchartz). This mean I have to do more work (like getting data from elspa, NPD, Famitsu/M-create), and made my own worldwide data. VGChartz is good for getting ballpark idea (they will not be wrong 90%, as in saying a game is selling 1 million, while the actual # is 100K or 10 Million, but they can be significantly wrong, like 50%).
About Mario Kart vs SSBB, they are both casual game, so the sales should be both good (since Wii is a casual heavy console). The actual # that should be reasonable for those 2 games are up to each member's calculation.
One word of caution : Mario Kart DS, is #10 in the Japan Top 10 "DS game with legs", with 2.7 Million sales in Japan, and still showing up occasionally in Top 30 Weekly.
I think it is possible that Mario Kart Wii can have greater than SSBB sales, World Wide. It is not certain, but it is significantly probable.
I don't think a fighting game has the same casual appealing than a fun racing game. Sorry I really can't see that.
VGC has European sources. According to ioi they have overall and higher input on European sales than American sales. It is just that Europe has more countries and no public data to "fine tune" exept shipment numbers it took longer to get such charts up and running.
Well I believe you, as soon as you give me a pdf from Nintendo. I am to lazy to search, but I trust VGC to copy and paste numbers from shipment reports. So I don't have to look it up, do I?
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This is the third time this has been posted. You can see the latest articles posted on Mario Kart Wii here.