Nintendo‘s announcement of the Wii U had me wondering whether or not they were finally going to implement a proper online system. The first step in the right direction is being made.

Both on the Wii, DS and 3DS we’ve had to deal with Friend Codes: randomly generated sequences of numbers that represents the player’s identity within each individual game. According to Ubisoft producer Adrian Blunt, the days of the friend codes are over and done with.

In an interview with MTV Multiplayer, during a demonstration of Ghost Recon Online, Blunt pretty much confirmed that Wii friend codes would be switched out for a more traditional account system.

“There’s a few things on that. The first is the ability for individuals to make accounts. Rather than a machine having an account, each individual user has an account.”

When asked if this was equivalent to an Xbox Live Gamertag, Blunt was as unambiguous as possible: “Yeah, exactly”.

“Rather than using friend codes, which we’ve had in the past, we’re able to connect players in a much easier way, which allows us to have a community that’s playing together in the game,” he said.