Thursday, May 8, 2008

It Is Like Watching Moving Pictures On My TV!...

Nintendo launched the brilliantly named Nintendo Channel earlier this week for the Wii. The Channel does several things, including show game preview movies and interviews with Nintendo muckamucks like Miyamoto himself. The service also does things in the background, like detect your type of TV, how often you play games, and even what types of games you play. The service sends this info back to Nintendo, and will even provide you with game recommendations depending on what you play.

My favorite aspect of this service is the free DS game demos. Simply access the game you wish to try, turn on your DS, and presto, free demo for upcoming and already released games. Last night I tried out Ninja Gaiden DS and Jam Sessions. And ya know what? I had so much fun with Jam Sessions that I went online and bought the damn thing! Got it cheap too :)

What does this teach us? That if you give people a chance to try the product, consumers may actually purchase it! WHAT A FASCINATING CONCEPT!

Let us hope that Wii game demos and Virtual Console demos appear at some point, and that we get no shortage of things to try. While Nintendo is still "winning" the current hardware war in pure number of units sold (namely, all of the ones they build are sold) they have been lacking in software and Wii specific features. This is another step in the right direction, but until we get rid of freaking game-specific Friend Codes and see more AAA titles, I will keep playing my 360 more often than my Wii.

1 comment:

IVIandahPandah said...

Ya know what else this teaches us? That Ross needs to bring his happy ass over to my house and try to FIX THE FRIGGEN WIFI!
Then maybe I'll get to try this so-called Wii Channel.
>P