In a series of international press events last week, Nintendo filled in a lot of the gaps in the public's knowledge of the upcoming Wii U, including launch date and pricing information. But among all the announcements, there was one major omission: how will the system handle online multiplayer games?

It has been more than a year since the Wii U was first unveiled, and Nintendo has devoted precious little of that time to detailing how the Nintendo Network (the company's umbrella brand for online services on the Wii U and 3DS) will let Wii U users connect and play with each other online. Given the company's history with the much-reviled friend code system, gamers are rightly curious to see how Nintendo will be upgrading the online experience this time around.

My assumption up to this point has been that third-party developers and other insiders have been up to speed on the workings of the Nintendo Network for a while now. I believed that Nintendo was simply waiting until closer to the Wii U's actual release to unveil that functionality more fully (and get another easy hit of press attention). But in a recent roundtable discussion reported by Destructoid, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Director Katsuhiro Harada said that he's just as much in the dark as the rest of us. Answering a question about the game's online infrastructure on the Wii U, Harada said, "Not quite sure at this point. I don't fully understand it. We’re still working with Nintendo to find out about their network."

This is, frankly, a stunning revelation considering the Wii U is now less than two months away from its November 18 release date in the US (and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is one of the games confirmed for launch day). Harada went on to say the netcode in the Wii U version of the game will be "as solid as those of competing systems," according to Destructoid, but I'm not sure how he can say that, given that he still doesn't "fully understand" how Nintendo's network works.

It's one thing to strategically hold back information from the public as you approach a big product launch. But if a major third-party developer is just as confused about how your system's online features work at this point, that suggests you're holding the details back because it's just not ready for prime time yet, even at this late date.

What we do know

We actually know a good deal about how the Wii U will use its WiFi connection for non-gaming features. Nintendo has been frequently talking up Miiverse, its Mii-powered social network that will let users send text, video, and picture messages; have live videochats with friends; leave tips for other players on popular games; and eventually connect through Web-enabled smartphones. Nintendo is expanding the Wii U's eShop by offering many retail games as downloads on release day. And last week we heard about Nintendo TVii, which will integrate the Wii U with a variety of online video streaming services.

But when it comes to actual online gameplay—as well as details like setting up accounts and friends lists, matchmaking, leaderboards and achievements—Nintendo has been much more vague. What statements the company has made about the Nintendo Network on the Wii U have hinted at a somewhat hands-off approach; letting various publishers use the system's WiFi connection as they please. Here's Nintendo President Reggie Fils-Aime talking to GameTrailers at E3 this year:

We think it's more impressive to have our publishing partners talk about the system and talk about the online capabilities... Our approach will be a flexible model, literally taking the best of what each of our third-party partners has to offer, marrying that with the best of what Nintendo does and bringing that, versus a more rigid, more closed type of environment.

And here's Fils-Aime again speaking to Forbes in an E3 interview:

So instead of a situation where a publisher has their own network and wants that to be the predominant platform, and having arguments with platform holders, we're going to welcome that. We're going to welcome that from the best and the brightest of the third-party publishers.

The implication of quotes like these, as I see it, is that each publisher will be responsible for maintaining its own online systems that are layered on top of the Nintendo Network. At this point it's hard to say just how tightly those publisher-based servers will be integrated with the Nintendo's still-nebulous service, or whether Nintendo's servers will be involved in online gameplay at all. Will these third-party games have access to a unified, system-wide friends list? Will I need to go through a separate, publisher-specific account to log in to certain games? We just don't know. If Harada's quote is any indication, neither do some major third-party publishers.

There are some signs that the Nintendo Network won't be as fully integrated into the Wii U ecosystem as competing services from Microsoft and Sony. Fils-Aime has said there will be some sort of system-wide, achievement-style system built into the console, for instance, but that third-party publishers will not be required to feature it in their games (which might blunt the overall impact). And precisely how that achievement system works is just one of many functional questions still remaining about the Nintendo Network.

How do I connect with friends on the system? (In a Kotaku E3 interview, Fils-Aime cryptically said the Wii U will have friends codes, but that the "simplified" setup is "not the existing friend code system"). Can I do a cross-game "Party" chat with my Wii U friends like I can on the Xbox 360? Will I be able to interrupt a friend's Netflix movie with an invitation to a Wii U game? Your guess is as good as ours.

In a recent interview with IGN, Fils-Aime explained why the company has been light on specifics of how the Wii U's online gameplay works.

From our perspective, we don't see online as a huge differentiator. It's like the air we breathe these days as gamers. So, for us, we're going to give you tons of that air, don't worry about it.

Fils-Aime is right that these kinds of features are expected these days, but I'm afraid Nintendo doesn't get the benefit of the doubt here. After experiencing the completely bare bones online gameplay offerings on the Wii, it's hard to just take it on faith that Nintendo has finally learned how to create a fully integrated, easy-to-use online gameplay network that will work seamlessly on its new system. That's not to say that they haven't done that, but without some sort of direct demonstration, or at least a more detailed explanation of how it will work, it's not fair to ask us to assume things are humming along just fine behind the scenes (and, again, Harada's quote gives some reason to doubt that in the first place).

"We have spent a lot of time and invested a lot of money to get our connected experiences right," Fils-Aime told Kotaku recently. "And so when we highlight how the eShop will work, how the Nintendo Network is going to work, I think people are going to be very pleased."

We're waiting.