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April 22, 2007
Wii Channels Is Inaccurate Nomenclature
That's the Nintendo Wii's interface, designed around a tiled system that scrolls horizontally. Each of those tiles are called channels. The Wii remote was designed to be held like a TV remote. You use it like a pointer to select channels. When Nintendo revealed all of this last year, I got extremely excited. Praises from third party developers like Square Enix only reenforced my belief that something BIG was on the horizon. Fast forward a year later and I love the Wii but I'm disappointed with the interface, lack of features and Nintendo's inaccurate nomenclature for what "Wii Channels" really are.
To date, Wii Channels are just place holders for system features and downloaded games. I envisaged something bigger. Wii Channels and a TV remote-like controller led me to believe Nintendo would take the most successful aspects of TV and gaming to create an interface widely understandable by anyone. That experience we call channel guides, channel switching and channel surfing.
I thought maybe Nintendo would dedicate a channel to each developer. The developers would then have complete control over the programming in their channel. They would launch demos and schedule special events to take place in different time slots, just like real TV. I envisioned an Independent Channel where the most unique games would live, enabling smaller studios to publish their games online on a major console. New Channels could be added as more developers jumped onto the Wii bandwagon. I saw Chat Room Channels where people would take their discussions right into a game. Nintendo and its third party developers would have space to advertise instead of relying just on the traditional methods. I even imagined people creating their own channels and sharing it with their friends and families anywhere in the world - an amalgamation of MySpace and YouTube where people could "tune" in. I took it a step further and imagined TiVO like capabilities where people could record their in-game play sequences and post them in their channel. For privacy and security purposes, Nintendo could easily implement a parental control system to deactivate inappropriate content just like in real TV. My ultimate envisage was IPTV, something the Xbox 360 showed off earlier this year at CES.
We already knew the console would never turn off, essentially staying online 24 hours. All the pieces seem to fit and I felt this would be how Nintendo could come back from 3rd place. They wouldn't need horsepower. They would win with content. Although the Wii is doing insanely well in terms of sales, I can't help but feel there was missed opportunity here. I'm not saying the Wii isn't fun. I'm just critical of how much potential was unseeded. Nintendo is always apathetic about doing more than gaming, but that doesn't mean they can't take the best characteristics from other industries and apply them to their medium. The console is still young so who knows, maybe sometime in the future we'll see some of these features - sooner than later I hope.
Posted by tranism at 5:50 PM | Permalink
Comments
They'll probably release a "lite" version of the wii called like... the... weeWii...
And it'll be 100% brighter, liter, slimmed down, and will have a very nice rss, channel etc thing.
Posted by: macha88 at April 22, 2007 6:53 PM
I kind of wish that the internet channel was more integrated into the system and that websites were hotlinked via channels. Websites that are specially designed for Wii access actually are nice and functional.
Posted by: Raphael at April 22, 2007 8:13 PM