The rap on Nintendo: Polished games, innovative hardware, internet hater. In a recent interview with Shigeru Miyamoto (guy's everywhere these days!), the Mario creator says not so! Nintendo is interested in providing a high quality online, networked experience. But, it's just not the way we want have come to expect. It's different. Miyamoto explains:

A lot of people have the misunderstanding that Nintendo is not interested in network gaming. What we are interested in isn't so much the idea of creating a game that is online and networked in a way that we have seen online up until now. We are really more interested in this idea of having the household television connected to the Internet constantly via the Wii. I think you are going to see a lot of new possibilities for new types of entertainment, such as new channels for the Wii in that type of network environment.

I think that will give rise to more social-based communities including those created by users, which is going to be a very interesting and exciting area for us to explore.

So we get more Wii Channels? Swell. Confession: My Wii is not even connected to the internet. That's what my computer is for. And for network play, that's what my Xbox 360 and PS3 are for. The Wii is for playing games with a buncha people at home. Am I alone on this? I can't be... Brian Ashcraft

Not Online Like Your Used To [GamePro, Thanks Yannis!]