Wii News Channel Launcing On Saturday
CNN is reporting that the Wii News Channel will be launching this Saturday. In addition to that, the news and photos will be provided by the Associated Press and offered in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German, and Swiss-German. News in the Japanese language will be provided by a separate agency named Goo. The interface will be in the form of a map and you can zoom in and out of different areas of the world. I suspect it will be like the Wii's Weather Channel. Want to know what's going on in the United States? Zoom in on it or its different regions. Perhaps it will, and I'm sure it will, let you zoom into some of the cities (like the Weather Channel) and you can chose to read some "local" news.
There also could be some multimedia on the way! Jane Seagrave, vice president of new media markets for the AP, said they would like provide multimedia in the future. They definitely have some time to get some up there. The Associated Press has a contract for two years to provide content for the new service.
The main reason why the Associated Press has decided to offer news on the Wii is to bring their content to new audiences on new platforms...and it could work! I can imagine there is many a gamer out there who might not pay attention to what happens beyond their own television screen if it's not displaying a video game. This could be a good way to get more people aware of what's going on in the world. With a new audience on the horizon, one would think that money from ads would be pretty nice. However, there are currently no plans to have ads on the service. I should also note that the new service will require a broadband connection and the free beta of the Wii-based Opera web browser...so if you haven't downloaded the beta, yet, hop to it!
You can grab the beta of the Opera browser, for free (until the full version comes out), in the Wii's Shopping Channel. Will you be using the service?
Wii News for Gamers [CNN]
Super Timsy
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 25 January 2007
· Comments (6)
Other stuff like this: associated press, nintendo, opera, wii news channel
I am an Internet news junkie, so while I doubt I will use this much initially, the interface could be revolutionary. If Nintendo plays this right, they could turn the Wii into the ubiquitous "set top device" so many companies have been vying to produce. I say that because of so many non-gamers interested in buying a Wii. Although I don't have one, I think Sony delivered a high end product capable of doing the same but without the mass consumer appeal, it's unlikely to penetrate the non-gamer market. The technophile in me is itching to see how this all plays out.
All these media features but no DVD playback.
Who needs another stinking DVD player?
Schwyzertüütsch!? Wow. I never knew the AP had a soft spot for amusing dialects. This'll be interesting.
don't think it will by schwyzertütsch actually - would be fun though - the first time i can read news in my native language ;-)
might actually be swiss news in german...
ach, du kommst dann aus der Schweiz! Cool! I was looking forward to practicing some Schwyzertüütsch, but I guess it's plain ole standard german for me...