Microsoft took what Sega did and evolved on it ten fold, and we sort of know how everything else turned out. With Nintendo though I always feel like the company just doesn’t understand the potential for greatness. This was the company that first introduced a system with four controller ports because of the multiplayer experience, and yet doesn’t feel the need to stretch that out on a global scale. Sure we get SSB, Mario Kart and a few others that the media would destroy if they didn’t have some sort of online multiplayer, but as a whole I just don’t think Nintendo sees the big picture, and that’s a real shame. I honestly think Nintendo could do some truly wonderful stuff in the online space if they only took it series. We are now 2012, an incredible 16 years after Sega launched the ill-fated NetLink adapter for the Sega Saturn and there will be a new console arriving without first-party online multiplayer support. I truly never imagined that would happen. I thought for certain that online multiplayer would co-exist with local multiplayer starting with the Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube and Xbox generation, but obviously that’s simply not the case.

Hopefully that puts things into perspective a bit. Am I not going to purchase the system now, no of course not, but it certainly seems to me that Nintendo might never fully come to terms with online multiplayer if they have pretty much ignored it for the past two generations.