Wiis lit up throughout America this morning as the Nintendo Channel, a potent portal for all variety of product promotion, finally made the leap across the Pacific.
As with all previous Nintendo-produced Wii Channels, the Nintendo Channel can be "purchased" for free in the Wii Shop Channel. Upon installation, users will be greeted with a brief introductory video, showcasing a variety of game footage, including the non-enthusiast's first glimpse of the soon-to-be-released WiiWare service.
The Nintendo Channel is, as noted, designed almost exclusively to promote Nintendo's currently-released and upcoming software. The primary interface is a multi-paged list of videos to browse, each highlighting a particular service or game for the Wii, Nintendo DS, or Virtual Console. Videos stream from Nintendo's servers when selected, each accompanied with expected controls like volume levels, full-screening, and positional seeking. As a nice bonus, you can opt to return to the video-selection interface while in the middle of watching a video, and the video will shrink into the top of the channel and continue to play until you make a new selection.
Clicking on one of the "More Information" buttons present beneath each video will take you to the channel's second function: a library of Nintendo's software. The primary browsing method for the library is via a button at the top of the main interface, which lets you specify any number of filtering options. You can pull up games by title, by category, or by telling the system what kind of gamer you are—letting you filter only the more casual or more hardcore titles.
Once you've got a game profile up, you're given some general information, statistics, the boxart, and links to any relevant videos the channel might have. There are some interesting cross-channel features in here, however. Links to related websites near the bottom of the profile will launch the Internet Channel, if you have it installed. Most games also have a "purchase" button that, depending on whether the game is in disc form or downloadable, will either launch a specialized web site in the Internet Channel where you can choose your vendor of choice (Amazon, Best Buy, WalMart, etc) or bring you straight to that game's page on the Wii Shop Channel—either way, letting you purchase the game right then and there.
A couple more interesting functions can be found tucked away in the game finding/filtering menu. The Nintendo Channel lets you choose any game you've played for more than an hour from a pre-populated list and rate its quality. You're given a series of questions regarding what you think of it and who you think would most enjoy it, and these selections are sent to Nintendo to help make their filters more accurate. Curiously, the only games to populate this list are Nintendo-published ones, barring Virtual Console games (I noticed Ristar in there, but none of my actual disk-based third-party-published software). One is forced to wonder if third parties don't necessarily want their software rated, or if there's something else at work here.
The final feature of note is the ability to wirelessly beam demos of DS software to an anxiously available DS. Currently available titles were mostly of more casual software, though I did notice a demo of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword in there.
The Nintendo Channel should be a vital tool for promoting software to those who aren't savvy enough (or just don't care enough) to research them on their own. It'll be especially useful for the upcoming launch of the WiiWare service, which already has a dedicated promotional video in the channel. Considering the complete lack of public advertisement for the upcoming service, it'll need all the help it can get.
As with all previous Nintendo-produced Wii Channels, the Nintendo Channel can be "purchased" for free in the Wii Shop Channel. Upon installation, users will be greeted with a brief introductory video, showcasing a variety of game footage, including the non-enthusiast's first glimpse of the soon-to-be-released WiiWare service.
The Nintendo Channel is, as noted, designed almost exclusively to promote Nintendo's currently-released and upcoming software. The primary interface is a multi-paged list of videos to browse, each highlighting a particular service or game for the Wii, Nintendo DS, or Virtual Console. Videos stream from Nintendo's servers when selected, each accompanied with expected controls like volume levels, full-screening, and positional seeking. As a nice bonus, you can opt to return to the video-selection interface while in the middle of watching a video, and the video will shrink into the top of the channel and continue to play until you make a new selection.
Clicking on one of the "More Information" buttons present beneath each video will take you to the channel's second function: a library of Nintendo's software. The primary browsing method for the library is via a button at the top of the main interface, which lets you specify any number of filtering options. You can pull up games by title, by category, or by telling the system what kind of gamer you are—letting you filter only the more casual or more hardcore titles.
Once you've got a game profile up, you're given some general information, statistics, the boxart, and links to any relevant videos the channel might have. There are some interesting cross-channel features in here, however. Links to related websites near the bottom of the profile will launch the Internet Channel, if you have it installed. Most games also have a "purchase" button that, depending on whether the game is in disc form or downloadable, will either launch a specialized web site in the Internet Channel where you can choose your vendor of choice (Amazon, Best Buy, WalMart, etc) or bring you straight to that game's page on the Wii Shop Channel—either way, letting you purchase the game right then and there.
A couple more interesting functions can be found tucked away in the game finding/filtering menu. The Nintendo Channel lets you choose any game you've played for more than an hour from a pre-populated list and rate its quality. You're given a series of questions regarding what you think of it and who you think would most enjoy it, and these selections are sent to Nintendo to help make their filters more accurate. Curiously, the only games to populate this list are Nintendo-published ones, barring Virtual Console games (I noticed Ristar in there, but none of my actual disk-based third-party-published software). One is forced to wonder if third parties don't necessarily want their software rated, or if there's something else at work here.
The final feature of note is the ability to wirelessly beam demos of DS software to an anxiously available DS. Currently available titles were mostly of more casual software, though I did notice a demo of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword in there.
The Nintendo Channel should be a vital tool for promoting software to those who aren't savvy enough (or just don't care enough) to research them on their own. It'll be especially useful for the upcoming launch of the WiiWare service, which already has a dedicated promotional video in the channel. Considering the complete lack of public advertisement for the upcoming service, it'll need all the help it can get.