Nintendo has been utilizing Buddy Codes for many years which has been disappointing for enthusiasts who desired gambling on Switch in contrast to their consoles.
But why does Buddy Codes be used by Nintendo? As you may have guessed, there is a fairly specific reason they keep doing this, and that’s been discovered via an internal demonstration included in the newly leaked Wii origin code.
According to Game Informer’s Imran Khan, the reason Friend Code was executed initially in the operating system of Wii was that Nintendo thought players will be disappointed in not getting the opportunity to spend.
The Kyoto platform owner considered the idea of allowing “a freely chosen screen name” as it felt it “would be better.”
However, “problems” with that approach quickly arose. “There is a high probability of duplicate screen names,” the internal presentation notes.
This “conflicts with the ‘Simple’ principle,” leading every Nintendo efforts, and making the company unique in the gaming business, as it would have forced players to “multiple reentries” until they would’ve found an available screen name.
With Friend Codes, you can have whichever screen name you like, as the online system will only read your automatically assigned code and not your name.
Also, having a system based on the screen name would have prompted people to guess someone’s in-game name “by trying different variations of their actual name,” and that would be conflicting with the “comfortable” principle the console maker has always strived for.
While it did look a little out of time when it started to pop up on the Internet, the Friend Code system has also been applied by other networks in recent times.
You have a similar solution on Discord, for example, and even Xbox Live applied that change to allow people to have the Gamertag name they like instead of one that is simply available.