The Wii Channels

Will the Wii channels truly make all of the members of your family take notice of that thing sitting on the coffee table?

It has recently been revealed that the Wii is meant to be much more than a revolutionary gaming console. The Wii is meant to be something that the whole family will be comfortable using. A living room centerpiece if you will. One of the ways that the Wii will attemp to appeal to Grandma is the recently revealed Wii Channels. These channels have a variety of uses, including checking the weather to playing the oldie but goodies on your virtual console. The Wii seems to have the potential to be used by every member of the family with its variety of uses outside of the gaming relm. In case you haven't been following the recent Wii bomshells (finally, the price and release date!) here is a short preview of a few of the Wii channels.

The Mii Channel:

You can now create your own custom avatar using the Mii Channel. This channel lets you customize your characters clothes and facial features. These characters can then be used on compatible games. The character designs can be saved onto your Wii controller so that you can use your character elseware, such as a friends house.

The Weather Channel:

As you might expect this channel tells you about the weather.

The Wii Shopping Channel:

This channel allows you to purchase games to be played on the Virtual console channels. The games prices are about 10$ or less (they could be more than this for certain games)

The News Channel:

This channel keeps you up to date on all the happenings in the world.

Virtual Console:

These channels (i think there's one for each system) will let you play old games from a variety of consoles that you have purchased from the Wii Shopping Channel.

The Picture Channel:

Just plug in your SD Card and watch your pictures appear on screen. This channel also lets you edit your photos using a paint like program.

There will likely be more of these channels when the Wii hits store shelves, but back to the topic of this disscussion. Are the Wii channels really going to appeal to everyone in the family, will the Wii truley be the living room centerpiece as Nintendo predicts. Please disscuss your views on this.

When Nintendo announced these features I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised.  Beforehand I was kind of annoyed with Nintendo's "It's all about the games" because there's a great opportunity to offer other features in the console, so this was really welcome.

The two channels that excite me the most are the Mii Channel and the Picture Channel.  Right off the bat the Mii channel is pretty cool, making your own avatar is always fun, and having a 3D cartoony version of yourself will be really cool.  Especially seeing that little version playing all of the Wii sports and Wario Ware games. 

But I think what will make the whole Mii thing really take off to the next level is when they start introducing online interactivity into the channel.  Built into the system (or maybe a download) being able to take your Mii into a little virtual village and do all sorts of things like communicate with people and even play games with each other would be awesome.  It'd pretty much be Nintendo's version of MySpace and Cyworld, so you know it'd be fun.

The Picture Channel just looks totally slick.  Take a look at this portion of the press conference where they demonstrate the Picture Channel It just screams polish.  And sure photo-viewing is in every single device ever now, but I've never seen it done as well as this.  Nintendo better be smart and have it so that you can read pictures off of a networked PC and not just the SD card.  And it'd be really cool if you could upload your pictures to your Mii's virtual hut... ok now I'm just speculating, but all of these things ARE possible and I'd be really surprised if Nintendo doesn't embrace them sooner rather than later.

I have to admit, even though I don't plan on getting a Wii at launch, I'm definitely warming up to the little white box.

I think this is a great idea. I'm definitely interested in seeing the various channels and I don't know anything about the Wii. So, I'd say +1 for Nintendo...

Nintendo seems to be climbing back onto its throne of gaming greatness. The emphasis seems to be not only one the games this year, its with expanding the horizons of what you can do OTHER than playing games. For example, the DS (in Japan anyway) is able to watch certain television channels and surf the web, plus it has a great library of games that aren't games. You can get cookbooks on your DS (cool!). Now with the Wii you can do all this and so much more. Photos, the internet, custom avatars, message boards, virtual console, wearther, news, and did I mention the games made for the Wii specificly. O, and you can play your old Gamecube games. Rolled into one package. One deliscious 250$ package.

What can the PS3 and Xbox 360 do. Play DVD's. Play games. These things are meant to appeal to the hard core gamer and that's about it. These consoles emphasize the games, using the age old controller design and offering up great graphics.

Talk about scary for Grandma. With the Wii you can ease her into gaming by showing her a few pictures of her grawndkids on the Wii photo channel, then she will gladly kick your butt at Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

 

Also, you had some great ideas about uses for all of the Wii's new bells and whistles Omar. If Ninetendo keeps thinking outside the box, they will have some seriously cool stuff inside that little white living room centerpiece.

Woh woh woh let's not go bashing the other consoles here now.  I'm not going to get into the details, but needless to say every next-gen console offers quite a bit of functionality above game playing.

I'll be curious to see if Nintendo releases or supports USB keyboards, since it does have the webbrowser and messaging/message-board services  It'll also be interesting to see how the DS will connect with the Wii.  I'm sure it'll be above and beyond the GBA->GC connection, and you won't have to buy expensive link cables since it'll all be WiFi.

And I do doubt how likely it is that older people will take to the console.  Interactive entertainment is an activity that takes quick reflexes and strong coordination, the Wii is no different in that regard, even with simple games like Wii Sports.  Old people a lot of times don't have that kind of motor functions to play games properly.  But we'll see, it'll be great if someone makes a game that appeals to seniors, and possibly fun for other members of the family at the same time.

I wasn't bashing the other consoles, I was simply stating that they are meant to be primarily game machines, with not much else but games. This is great for gamers, but for other members of the family, not so great. I would love to get a PS3 just to play the new ratchet and clank, or resitance fall of man, or heavenly sword, the list goes on. But i'm pretty sure my moms not to keen on blasting aliens.

Hey Silence, pretty good points.  The other consoles do quite a bit beyond games, but they're still focused on entertainment.  MS has their whole Media Center Extender going on, and PS3 has Blu-Ray playback.  Wii on the otherhand provides functionality that isn't related to entertainment at all with the World Channel, Weather channel and News Channel.  I can see those 3 channels working well if the Wii is always on and connected to your tv.  This way it's only a matter of changing the video signal on the tv which can be done from the remote.  But if you have to move over to the console and turn it on, well, it sucks that people are that lazy, but I can see it getting a lot less use then.

No offence Omar, but the Xbox 360 media center is ridiculous since you have to turn the volume way up to hear anything over the huge fan! Give me the old school modded xbox anyday, now that's a true non-gamer machine!

ya, the noise on the 360 is a problem, especially since my situation I usually play with the console about 2 feet away from my head.  Headphones helps with that.  If you had a nice home theatre setup with the 360 and tv over 8 feet away from you, then I don't think it'd be much of a problem.  It definitely is something that Microsoft is going to have to improve upon though, and the Wii and PS3 are already known for being very quiet.