Get ready for Nintendo's Wii TV micro-transaction harvest

Mike Bantick
Saturday, 03 January 2009 07:18

Your IT - Entertainment

Nintendo have released further plans on a new channel to bring video on demand into Wii owning households.

We caught a whiff of this last month , but Nintendo have confirmed their intentions to join their peers with a video-on-demand service for the Wii game console.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console has the Netflix movie streaming service in some parts of the world, whilst the Sony PS3 has a similar service and will have the PVR style Play TV arriving this year.

But Nintendo have been going their own way during this generation of home entertainment consoles, so it came as a bit of a surprise that a video on demand service for the Wii has been announced. 

This video on demand service however, is a uniquely Nintendo experience.  Unlike Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo is steering clear of offering movie style entertainment – which makes sense since they have not done the deals with content providers that M and S have.

Instead Nintendo has teamed up with advertising company Dentsu (along with Fuji Television and Nippon Television), to produce content in keeping with its current Wii delivery channels.

Like the Forecast weather, News, Wii Vote and other Wii channels, the new video on demand offering, currently dubbed Wiinoma, is expected to deliver family- oriented cartoons, “brain-training” quizzes, cookery, educational and other lifestyle shows.

With 18 million of the estimated 40 million Wii consoles connected to the internet around the world, it is time for Nintendo to start reaping micro-transaction cash from its install base.

Some content will be free, but other – yet to be specified – broadcasts will be pay-per-view.

Expect also, given the relationship that has been struck, to see lots of advertising on this Wii channel.  And with a wide demographic to aim towards, expect this advertising to be a scatter-gun of all types of products.

Japan is expected to receive Wiinoma this northern Spring, with Nintendo believed to be considering the rest of the worlds audience sometime soon after that.