A quick question… When Metroid Prime 3: Corruption launches next week, what is going to happen with the preview channel?

I have a few ideas kicking around in my head, but I wanted to hear what you guys thought. Something has to happen, right? The preview is a real live Channel on the Wii’s menu screen. Are we all just going to delete it when the game launches?

I think not. What’s going to happen?!

Fellow Nintendo ninjas over at Nintendojo are asking an interesting question today: What’s your favorite Wii Channel? So far, I think the whole Channel thing’s been hot and cold for a lot of people. Whereas I enjoy periodically checking the weather (from 7 hours ago) and surfing the Net for a few minutes from my couch, others see it as the plague. Well, something like that anyway.

But the Metroid advertisement preview channel has shown us all that new twists can be applied to old ideas with these Channels, and the upcoming Wii Ware overhaul that will see independently developed downloadable games should prove an interesting experiment, to say the least.

I’m not going to steal Nintendojo’s thunder and ask what your favorite channel is. For that, go over there and enjoy. Here at Infendo though, I want to know what your dream channel would be. Obviously, since this is Nintendo we’re talking about, pr0n and such is immediately disqualified from this impromptu poll.

What would your Dream Wii Channel offer? What would it look like? What would it do? Comment away.

[Blake, for the tip win!]

According to a recent PC World article, the version of Flash included with the Opera-powered Internet Channel
on Wii is vulnerable to an odd video attack.

Nintendo Wii consoles that run the exploit completely freeze up while browsing a specially crafted video, said Symantec. Videos of the different effects of the bug on different platforms can be found on YouTube.

Should we expect an update from Opera and Nintendo soon?

The speculation and discussion has already started in around the WiiFit Balance Board it seems, with Square/Enix, of all companies, expressing interest in the peripheral today. And that’s to be expected; it didn’t take a video games genius last week to see that there was massive potential beyond WiiFit’s mini-games and BMI indexing abilities.

Button-less, hands-free strafing in FPS games? Skateboarding/snowboarding balance? A balance mechanic in fighting games? Full contact Yoga?!

The thing is, Square is a great company, and I’m sure they’ll do something with the balance board. That said, however, I think the “right developer” for the board is one that technically doesn’t exist yet. (more…)

Some interesting/sad news from Nintendo today. GameIndustry BIZ tells it like it is, or might be:

“It’s hard to say in the future if we will ever bring back the Game Boy trademark,” he told GameDaily BIZ. Harrison also informed us that Nintendo’s WiiWare service could actually still launch this year. When the announcement was first made, Nintendo made it seem like we wouldn’t see anything until early 2008, but Harrison isn’t ruling out 2007 entirely. “It may not take until 2008. I’ve seen a couple of ideas that have already been generated even before we went public [with WiiWare]. Whether those are going to be ready or not, I don’t really know,” he said. “It really depends on the developers. If they have their games ready and they’re of an appropriate quality, then there’s nothing to stop them from launching before the end of the year. It’s just the fact that we only recently gave out the development tools and the development specifications, so most people haven’t even started yet.”

Hear that? Get going developers! No sleep. No eat. No significant others. Just cold, lonely development. First to market gets the kingdom and the glory, and the lamentations of their women! And they can scream “w00t frist!” like so many of the Internet’s finest citizens do every day.

On the Game Boy front I’ve always secretly hoped that the next iteration of Nintendo’s hand held strategy would borrow a page from the retro book and revive the Game Boy trademark in a completely redesigned shell. All the bells and whistles but with those tell-tale letters a lot of us saw when we opened a small rectangular present at Christmas time in 1989. Sounds like it’s not slated to happen, but I can dream.

[Thanks, John!]

Infendo did a little genuine journalism today and interviewed Jennifer Fellnhofer, the head of PR at Bplus. If you’ll remember, Bplus was the first developer to formally announce a WiiWare downloadable title.

What we discovered from this brief interview was A) BPlus was very prompt in getting back to us, B) the contact with Nintendo was initially made in 2006, and C) Jennifer promised me that “[Bplus] are going to change the paradigm of how game development works.” All in all this was a neat look inside the process. And it’s an Infendo exclusive, so enjoy: (more…)

If you build it, the indie developers will come.

Nintendo’s betting on it, and today there’s some big news coming out of Redmond (or is that San Fran/NYC now?): WiiWare is officially an indie developers dream. “Small shops with big ideas” — that’s the spin from Regggie and company, and I’m pretty confident that with the Wii’s present success, we’re going to see a slew of new one-hit wonders flooding the Wii Shop Channel sometime soon.

This is not your daddy’s Nintendo anymore, kids. (more…)

Some delicious Nintendo morsels on the day.

• New Wii download service (not VC) coming within 2 months
• Rumor: Nintendo Power To Be Licensed To Outside Publisher
• Nintendo VP Harrison Moving to San Francisco With Sales, Marketing Crew
• Regginator is “doin’ great” because his employer is making grundles of money

Out of the above four, I’m going to easily say the first one has me the most excited. Que sera?

As we all already know Impossible Mission is going to drop sometime in the near future courtesy of the Wii Shop Channel. It’s a first for Nintendo, but not necessarily for an industry that has seen the likes of Xbox Live Arcade.

Since the debate and conversation on Infendo has been lively this week on a range of other topics, I thought I’d try and tap into that with a post about other original IP that will be shipped not via the retail channels, but completely online via the Wii Shop Channel.

What kinds of games do you want to see? Remakes? Old IP from obscure systems? What genre do you think will have the biggest impact when delivered to players this way? Note that last question is not what you’d *like” to see from a digital distribution channel, it’s what you think will perform best on a Nintendo system.

According to the Preview section of the June 2007 Nintendo Power, a remake of the classic Epyx game, Impossible Mission, is coming to Wii via the Shop Channel. The game was announced by developer System 3 several months ago, but this is the first confirmation about how it will be released to Wii owners. It’s something Nintendo hinted at a while ago, but this is the first confirmation of a non-Virtual Console title to be released via download. An actual game card of the game will be produced for DS as well.

My lovefest with Aeropause continues: If I had a wireless (or even USB) keyboard with my Wii, I’d never surf the Internet with a browser on a PC ever again.

Now that I’m back on said crappy Windows machine, I find that there’s just no replacement for a keyboard. And there you have it: the single feature that sets using the Wii Internet Channel apart from using a web browser on a computer. I wish I could surf with the Wii Remote all the time, and type with a keyboard as needed. If I could do that, I’d probably do most everything on the Wii browser and let Windows rot.

A quick aside unrelated to this post: I, for one, don’t understand people who criticize free things. Like anyone who criticizes the final build of the Wii Browser. Or the Everybody Votes Channel. Both are optional downloads and both are completely free. And both perform exactly as advertised. No one said browsing on the Wii was going to be revolutionary. With a keyboard, however, they might start.

Is your Wii flashing this morning? The full version of the Internet Channel was released today. After an update of my Wii’s firmware (from version 2.0U to 2.2U) and a download of the new Internet Channel from the Wii Ware section of the Shopping Channel, my browsing experience on Wii was fully enhanced.

New features introduced in today’s release include:

• New type of zoom, more scrolling options, increased simplicity and ease-of-use, and the ability to turn the toolbar on or off.
• This version of the browser remains a free download until June 30, 2007, and once downloaded is free for the lifetime of the system.

Hit Opera’s site for full info, screenshots, and video. Internet Channel Get!

4cr gives us some more dirt on NiGHTS:

• Masks allow NiGHTS to shape-shift into a dragon, a dolphin (Ecco, anyone?), and a rocket
• Change scenery according to real-world seasons with the Forecast Channel
• Seven dream worlds to explore
• Exchange items via WiiConnect 24

A personal aside: With NiGHTS incoming, as well as the mature fare in Godfather and Manhunt 2 on the way, AND all the first party IP coming down the pipeline as early as next week (Super Paper Mario is the second coming of Mario, apparently), this Wii thing is starting to look like its smaller, portable cousin the DS, which was also a late bloomer as the industry woke up to its capabilities.

In an interview with the developers of Wii’s Photo Channel, the names of both Wii Cats are revealed.

ITO:
By the way, the cats in the Photo Channel and News Channel are brothers and sisters.

SAKAINO:
The cat in the Photo Channel is Rassie, the younger sister. Because in Japanese, she always ends her sentences with “~rashiiyo” (meaning “they say” or “I heard”).

ITO:
The News Channel one is Runda, taken from the way he ends his sentences with “~runda” (a boyish remark placed at the end of a sentence to emphasize its context).

MATSUSHITA:
Is that official?

ITO:
I guess it’s official now since we said it here! (laughs)

You never noticed the Wii Cats? They’re the helpful kitties that provide tips in both the Photo Channel and the News Channel. Do you think we’ll be seeing more of these friendly felines in upcoming Wii Channels?

Developers of the Internet Channel for Wii had a round table discussion and revealed some new info concerning the final build (with video examples). While this doesn’t exactly sound like the last version of the Internet Channel that we’ll see, it is exciting that the new version will have some dynamic differences from the Trial edition currently available.

A few embellishments:

• updated scrolling
• improved zooming
• an auto-hide toolbar
• better compatibility with more sites
• multiple remote cursors
• search button
• improved response speed

Still no tabbed browsing or external keyboard support, although the latter doesn’t sound completely out of the question for a future build of the software.

Sounds like it’s improving, but is there any functionality you’d still like to see?

[Thanks, Sidepocket!]