Wii News Channel hits early!
Published by dasme 1 year, 5 months ago in News.
If you run to your Wii right now and perform a network update, you will find that the News Channel is there waiting for you a whole day early! I had a short chance to check it out this morning and I have to say that I’m quite impressed. I thought that the News Channel would be nothing more then a glorified RSS reader, but Nintendo turned it into something fun.
When you first launch the channel you are brought to simple RSS reader view where you can choose from carious news categories such as Technology or Local Happenings. It’s when you select a story that the fun happens. The story pops up on screen looking like a news paper article, and on the right side o fthe screen you are shown it’s location on the world map. Even better you can browse news by geographic location and see how many stories are from your favorite city. One nice touch is that the number of news stories are shown graphically by a stack of virtual news papers. This stack rotates slowly and shows any image that may be associated with a particular news story. It gives you a quick graphical way to look for stories that interest you.
Lastly, there is a slideshow mode included. This mode displays the news headlines to you one at a time in a very CNN or MSNBC format. Images associated with the story are shown, and you can quickly jump to the full article by hitting the plus button.
All in all I have to say that this is a nice addition to the Wii, and something that I’m sure to use often provided it gets regular story updates. Check out a video that has been embedded below.
Wow, how they implement the globe feature is insanely cool!
I’m sure lots of people will find the News Channel pretty useful… but I don’t think I’m gonna get much use out of it. I don’t own a Wii yet, and even when I do, I don’t think I’m gonna enable WiiConnect 24, coz my dad won’t let me
Still, this channel is, like you said, “a nice addition to the Wii”. And I can’t wait to see what other exciting channels are in the works!
P.S. do you know when the Wii’s gonna be available in Hong Kong? Nintendo doesn’t seem to think of it as an important market AT ALL. Oh well…