Wii Wishlist

Nintendo has long hailed the awesome prospects of its WiiConnect24 service, whereby every Wii is constantly and consistently connected to the internet via Wi-Fi or a USB adapter. This is supposed to open a magical gate to the world, where things download themselves and you feel like a part of a giant community of players. Nintendo is accomplishing very few of these goals.

While the Friend Code ideas we mentioned earlier would help bolster the sense of community, there are some other simple things Nintendo could do to make players feel like their Wii really is hooked into a persistent network. For one thing, the Wii should actually be online 24/7. My Wii is on a slightly unstable Wi-Fi connection and actually tends to reset itself to a different connection option (there are 3) without informing me. Before I do anything internet related, I have to go into the Internet settings to really know if I'm online at all. A simple connection indicator on the Wii home screen would be a great start.

Were the Wii truly connected to the net 24/7, there'd be no reason to have to manually download updates to the firmware or wait 10-40 seconds to connect to the Shopping channel. Important updates should be downloaded automatically when I'm away, and I should be notified when I boot up the Wii, via a very obvious and helpful announcement. Updates should also download silently in the background if I'm currently using the system, so that I can continue to play games or do whatever while they are downloading.

The only reason I know that there are new Virtual Console titles to download every Monday is because I'm an internet denizen. Even then, though, I rarely know which titles are coming out. Utilize that message board a little more, Nintendo, and alert me every time a new batch of games is released, complete with a list of the specific titles that are available. Similarly, there have been firmware updates released in the past that I was never notified about, and wouldn't have known to download if I hadn't read about them online. Adding more notifications overall would really help to further the impression that the Wii is a persistently networked device. That said, the current bulletin notifications in the lower right are too easy to miss since there is always at least one bulletin for the day, if you have used your Wii at all. The interface would benefit from a solid alert notification for unread and high-priority messages.

Xbox Live currently offers a superior feeling of community. I know Nintendo is not aiming to mimic Live, but in some instances it should be. Xbox Live is a top-notch and refined service. Taking some of the community aspects of LIve that work well and applying them to the Wii online service would make Wii-ers around the world very happy.


We've put a lot of time into talking about the main issues that we think Nintendo should address, but there's a laundry list of tiny things that don't really warrant numerous paragraphs of explanation.

• Why can't we highlight text we're typing with the keyboard, drag it to other points, or delete it en masse?
• The "Iwata Asks" interviews claim that allowing sub-channels for the organization of things like Virtual Console games is too complicated, but I'd like to dispute that assertation. It's fine when you only have a few things to mouse through, but I know I enter an anaphylactic shock when I look at a PC desktop that's overflowing with icons. At least add a Virtual Console channel dedicated entirely to managing and organizing your downloaded games for the neat-freaks among us. People really like to browse through their collections of things in an organized manner.
• If I temporarily synch a couple of friends' controllers to my Wii in the system menu, please stop disconnecting them when I boot up a game. And let me turn off permanently synched controllers without having to disconnect all of them in the Home menu. Maybe press power button on the Remote to turn it off, hold power button to turn off the system?
• Centralize the play history feature. It's interesting to see what I played on a specific day, sure, but there's no way I'm gonna go back day by day and add up all those numbers to figure out my total play times. A specific "Play History" service somewhere where everything's indexed by game would be very nice, and not clutter up the Message Board with a "new message" every time games are exited.

The Wii, in its current incarnation, sits squarely in the realm of undeveloped potential. There are a ton of things that could be totally excellent, but stop short of actually reaching that point. There is groundwork all over the place, but it feels like the workers never came back from their lunch break. Thankfully, virtually all of these aspects are the sort that can be fixed, or finished, via firmware updates. The ten-thousand dollar question is whether or not Nintendo will actually address them.

We're wishing.