No you don't.

Look at this gigantic post on you turning the main point from Nintendo to other companies to avoid the discussion. Instead of talking about Nintendo's shortcomings (cause yes, their service is bare minimum: a stable environment is the bare minimum in this day and age), you basically tried to spin this to throw rocks at Sony and Microsoft. Don't worry about them, the rest of us have been throwing those rocks at them. Nintendo could really use your help.

Online multiplayer shouldn't be paid, but, at least and thanks to competition, they are now throwing in "free" games each month with the subscription and that alone makes it worth it. Also, not all games require plus or gold to use the online MP.

And please, do not even try to compare WiiU's service with the PS3, or anything, because it doesn't even get to that level. Nintendo just recently discovered the commodities of gamertags/IDs, aside from that, there is nothing else that they offer. No matchmaking, no voice chat/barely a voice chat, really archaic messaging system, digital purchases stucked in one system, etc, etc, etc.

Funny thing is, i knew you would be the one coming in here and making such a long post and actually proving my point (You didn't criticize Nintendo at all and instead spent don't know how many minutes ranting about the other companies to protect Nintendo). It's that mentality of: "Yeah Nintendo has flaws, but look at Sony and look at Microsoft". That is simply trying to divert attention from the problems.

EDIT: I forgot to clarify something: Bare minimum is not horrible. Bare minimum can be a good service, but it is still bare minimum.

The very top of my post held two such examples of me NOT avoiding the problems.
Not once have I ever said that Nintendo doesn't have flaws.
Nor does discussing where they've done something right compared to others suddenly equate to dismissing their flaws or not criticizing them.

Hell, I have spent an entire blog post in the recent past detailing how I felt Nintendo should have handled Splatoons vc issues, and I've criticised them for poor advertisement efforts constantly for the past decade.

But in articles like this, people like you seem to want to pretend that Nintendo is the only one that needs improvement, or that I never give them crap for their stupid decisions simply because I'm willing to either praise them for the right ones, or willing to talk about the flaws of others in the same breath.

Any time someone, in an article like this, points out an opinion that sheds any shred of negativity on anyone other than Nintendo, even if its for the sake of fair comparison, guys like you immediately get up in arms and seemingly personally offended over it.

So, yeah.
I do.
Frequently.
And many others give Nintendo fair criticism as well.

I'm a multiplatform owner and have been with both Sony and Nintendo since their early days.
I've frequently praised Sony for their methods in advertisement and in providing a stable environment to third parties and indies.
Heck, I was quite happy to hear that they got shovel knight, for instance, and I'm hoping they'll continue providing a good space for indies going forward.
If I hated Sony as a whole, I wouldn't still own a PS3.
I'm just not going to put them, or Nintendo, up on a golden pedestal of perfection like so many console war soldiers like to do.

If you're demanding to see critique posts from me that don't use comparisons or that don't show at least some credit given for the things they do right, then you're in for disappointment.

Mindless bashing of any one company is not my forte.

Oh, and as far as whether or not they are bare minimum?
I wouldn't call thorough integration with something like Miiverse a bare minimum feature.
Again, they lack a lot, and many of the things that people list like cross game chat and better accounts are things I want to see from them.
But they are past the point of bare minimum already, by offering an integrated user community (not just for their own games, either, but for indies and third parties as well) where seamlessly sharing everything from usernames to in game pics and advice is not only entertaining, but encouraged.
That's not something even PSHome really offered that well, when it was around.

@ wonderfulmonkeyman - As usual, your damage-control posts are all about excuses and finger-pointing, but fail to hold Nintendo responsible for its shortcomings. Instead of demanding that they improve their hardware, online infrastructure, and policies, you encourage Nintendo to keep going down the same path that is leading them into irrelevance.

It's a shame, because at this point Nintendo's future looks pretty bleak, with even their own fans failing to demand better products and services from them to regain competitiveness. It doesn't bode well for the future of this once mighty company.

I agree with your statement. There are both spectrums: continuous haters and continuous apologists.

We are not debating the reasons why they do not charge for online, but we can definitely and safely say that charging for it at this very moment with the lack of features and limitations the WiiU currently has at this moment, would be simply not reasonable.

We are debating the features and in that front, it is severely lacking and the only thing we can do to improve it is to be vocal about it, but how can you be vocal when there's many people content with the bare minimum?

Now that the WiiU is "practically/unofficially dead", do you think some of those "Doom" articles were just pure hate or do you see some new value in some of them, and let me emphasize in the "SOME OF THEM" part because others are just pure hate (same hate that Microsoft and Sony had received in their time as well).

The fact that the WiiU fell down this much is because there were too many things that needed improvement: the gamepad became totally irrelevant, it's missing basic features, it's missing 3rd party games, etc.

What we can hope is that they are truly listening for the NX and expect a console that gives the consumers features that are on par with the competition and great games (1st and 3rd) that does not rely on a gimmick to be different from the rest.

okay MAGAt.