Wii U online service will be free

At Nintendo’s annual shareholder meeting yesterday, we got some details about the online experience with the console. The question came up as to whether there will be a charge for certain aspects of the online experience or not.

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that a payment for connecting other devices to the Nintendo Network made sense, but for the Wii U itself, a subscription charge is not being considered. That’s great news. Wii U users will never have to pay extra to go online using their console. Heck, you will be paying enough for the console, right?

As far as payment for connecting other devices, I think he means devices from other companies. It should be free to hook up Nintendo devices to your Wii U. It would be pretty stupid to charge users to connect their 3DS for example.

EA to go 100% digital

Games publisher, EA recently announced that they will soon be a 100%-digital company. EA’s president, Frank Gibeau says that the digital market is the fastest growing area for the company (which is currently making the company $1.2 billion in revenues annually ).

I guess it makes sense. There have been rumors of the next generation PlayStation and Xbox being disc-free consoles. Plus, many gamers are already downloading games instead of buying them from traditional retailers. EA could easily go digital-only and still make big money.

Then again, are all of the customers ready for it? That’s the real question. You can only get their money when the customer is ready to buy digitally.