TVG Exclusive - Nintendo Online Plans??? News

Nintendo’s online plans have been the cause of much speculation recently; with the release of Sega’s Phantasy Star Online drawing ever near, GameCube owners will finally be able to pick up the GameCube’s Broadband Adaptor, but what have Nintendo got in store for those who want to play online?<br><br>This is a question everyone in the videogames world has been asking themselves for the last few months; will Nintendo go up against the mighty Microsoft and Xbox Live! or shy away and take a more conservative approach favoured by Sony with the PS2.<br><br>It doesn’t seem as if a day passes without some rumour suggesting one thing and another day claiming something else; we decided to try and uncover some details on what Nintendo has got planned, as we sent our Japanese correspondent to trawl through the archives at the Japanese Patent Office.<br><br>Weeks later our correspondent has returned with some interesting information; the patents revealed many of Nintendo’s hardware launches, including the technology behind the e-card reader, wavebird and the secret behind the GBA-GC connectivity. However that’s not what we wanted, undeterred our correspondent returned to his books and uncovered more information; it appears that Nintendo have filed a number of patents related to online gaming!<br><br>A first patent hints at the system to authenticate users and <I>charge</I> them a fee to play online; whilst another looks at a communication system to eradicate latency and restart a game if a connection fails; finally a detailed patent was issued in regards to the ‘Management Method of a Network Game’, which appears to be a similar system to Xbox Live!, alerting players whenever they get a request to play a game.<br><br>We’ll send Yoshinko back to the archives to try and uncover more secrets, but remember where you heard this first…<br>