I've made no secret of the fact that I'm totally psyched for the upcoming Nintendo Wii and that I hope it takes off when it's released. I finally got a chance to check it out in person last week, and the games lived up to my expectations for the most part. However, one aspect of the Wii seems pretty half-baked to me: the Channels system, Nintendo's main menu and online portal that appears when you turn the system on. It's clear that Nintendo is going for the non-gamer market with this, but couldn't it have been implemented better? What should be a solid online-gaming system instead feels distinctly like filler.
Take a Look at Mii Now
Wii Channels is what you encounter when you first turn the system on: a nonthreatening, TV-like menu of "channels" representing different things you can do with the console. Among them: Play a game, check the weather, or play with your Mii. Mii? Yes, the Mii is perhaps the lamest feature of the Wii, a personal avatar designer that lets you create a little character that looks like you and "lives" on your system. What are the benefits of having a Mii? Uh, good question. It seems like Nintendo wanted a feature that was so cute it would draw in grandma and grandpa, but forgot to add features after making it cute. Really the only thing you can do with your Mii is use it as a player in Wii Sports, the free game that comes with the console. That's it. A character-creation mode in Wii Sports would give you the same thing and not take up a "channel" on your startup screen.
What else can you do through the channels menu? Well, you can browse photos on your TV, a feature that's now available on about ten million other products. You can check the weather on your TV, something I believe has been available for a long time through a little thing called the Weather Channel. A news channel also offers a more limited version of something you've been able to do on your TV for a while: check the news. Why are these "features"? Will people really go through their Wii to check the weather? It seems doubtful.
Missing the Connection
What Nintendo has done is put Internet access into the Wii while removing some of the best benefits of having a connected console. Yeah, you can surf the Web, but there's no keyboard available and you need to pay to download the
Opera browser. And the number one thing you would obviously want to do — play games against people online — isn't an option at all, at least at the moment. It's a tease, being online on your console and not being able to play games using it. Isn't that the whole point of having a connected console?
The one great thing you can do using the Web on the Wii is download games for the virtual console, the Wii's built-in emulator for older games. This allows you to get games from past consoles such as the NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis onto your Wii. Retro gaming is making a comeback, and this is a great way to do it. However, imagine being able to play Mario Kart against your friend in another state. Again, not having online gameplay as an option seems like a missed opportunity.
From everything that we've learned about it, Wii Channels appears to be a pretty weak offering from Nintendo. Fortunately, people aren't going to buy the Wii to surf the Web or look at photos; they're going to buy it for the games. There's still the distinct possibility that Nintendo will announce an online gaming feature in the near future, but as it stands the Wii's Channels and online system are pretty underwhelming. One would think that the success of the Xbox Live online system would inspire Nintendo to take a similar route. However, Nintendo has been clear from the start that the Wii is taking a different path from the big boys, and for the most part the company's choices have been spot-on. Let's just hope they don't screw up what could be another selling point by aiming just at non-gamers.
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