Nintendo makes fun characters who do fun things in, for the most part, fun games. The House of Mario is all about the fun. But streaming yourself having fun playing a Wii U game? That is not fun, according to Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime.
In an interview with Polygon, Fils-Aime explained why livestreaming services like Twitch aren’t part of the Wii U’s feature set:
“We don’t think streaming 30 minutes of gameplay by itself is a lot of fun.”
“We’re looking to do a lot of great things with Twitch… The Nintendo Treehouse Live at E3 that we’re executing through Twitch is doing fantastic numbers.”
“Your specific question of just purely streaming gameplay, what we’ve got to think through is, so what’s fun about that? From a consumer standpoint, what’s fun about it?”
Fils-Aime goes to use Mario Kart TV and the livestream of the Smash Bros. Invitational earlier this week as a good example of how Nintendo views the potential pluses of video sharing. Nevertheless, his comments make it sound that support for raw livestreaming isn’t something that Nintendo will be adding to the Wii U anytime soon.
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12 responses to “Nintendo: Twitch Streaming Isn’t On The Wii U Because ‘It’s Not Fun’”
He took one look at the comments section and nope’d.
Livestreaming on a console isn’t even possible for those not on the NBN. I know the article is talking about American users, but how much people really stream on their Xbox One and PS4 anyway? The PS4 Twitch app sucks and there still aren’t much people with an Xbox One.
Yeah but its getting buil now, they are working out in front of my house currently. Give it 2 years and hopefully we will have the NBN. But the gamepad would be great like having 2 tvs.
This is true. I have a mate in Sydney who has pretty good internet, and when he livestreamed MGSV:Not The Full Game, it wasn’t very watchable.
When he streamed Titanfall, it was completely unwatchable AND unplayable. Gave him too much lag to upload all that video/audio.
Edited: I didn’t read the article and thought it was about watching streams, not streaming yourself. Good job, 8am Cody. Just wait for the caffeine to kick in.
Wow. Have they seen how much traffic their games get on twitch?
Its fine. 90% of my usage of twitch is to watch fighting game tournaments and streams. All serious streamers just use there computer/laptop to provide a proper quality stream. I tried watching a few streams on live from playstation app (which sucks so bad) and the quality was horrible.
Watching is fine for me too. They’re talking about streaming gameplay yourself, which is pretty much impossible on 99% of Australian internet connections.
I understand, I am 100% fine with Nintendo not having integrated twitch streaming. The quality of the ps4 streams when done through the console are terrible. I don’t want to see a bunch of bad looking mario kart streams pop up on twitch.
Yeah that makes sense. It’d be nice if Australia didn’t have such terrible internet, then we could all partake in this kind of thing.
I don’t particularly agree and am a little surprised at Nintendo’s attitude. The Twitch streams I watch are essentially a virtual lounge room, with everyone socialising via the chat/mike/Skype while people play. Given Nintendo’s lounge room gaming focus, I thought this would have been their take as well.
70kb/s upload and I can stream decently enough. Anyone complaining about not being able to stream either has a worse upload, crappy computer, or doesn’t know what they’re doing and hasn’t fixed their settings up to work with their connection speeds.
As for it not being fun? It can be a LOT of fun, sometimes the best part of my week when I stream. Thank you Nintendo for forcing your views on us <3
I agree, it’s not fun. Do it or don’t, I don’t care about watching other people play games.
I’ve been on the NBN for just under a year now and I enjoy watching streams on my 100/50mbps connection. 500GB data allowance and no excess fee’s. It’s not like Nintendo have been in touch with reality for the last 15 years – there are endless PS4 twitch streams, so clearly alot of people disagree with Nintendo…..As usual.
When do they ever listen to anyone else? “You’ll like what we tell you to like”.