It’s been recently revealed that the Nintendo Wii U console’s controllers will come loaded with NFC technology, and it seems the company wants to use it to revolutionise the way gamers purchase DLC. The idea is to take the fuss out of buying downloads by making the purchasing process as simple as possible.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata believes that the company has struggled with DLC in the past chiefly because there are two many “steps” involved in the process: “It is said that with each extra step, the number of customers drops by one tenth. Our challenge is how to improve such steps on by one.”
The Wii U tablet controller comes with NFC, and Nintendo is looking at using this technology to allow gamers to purchase DLC with a mere swipe of their credit cards. This way the kerfuffle of purchasing prepaid Wii Points cards or manually entering credit card details is neatly sidestepped. The Wii U will also have an advantage over the Wii in that it will come with a hard drive to store the DLC – no need to use SD cards here.
Of course, NFC is not without its own problems, and Iwata is aware that whatever system is put in place does not allow for accidental purchases (at this point we’re imagining Little Johnny grabbing his dad’s credit card and buying everything in the Wii U online store).
The Nintendo Wii U will launch in the UK later this year.
(Via Develop)
