Saturday, May 24, 2008

Wii launches video channel

You can now download and add a video channel to your Wii if you have it connected to the Internet.

While the initial offering is pretty limited, it definitely has a lot of potential. The other consoles have long been able to play videos, but those videos haven't really been organized into a "channel" per se. Wii effectively simplifies the organization of the videos and introduces a pretty slick player and nav to peruse the trailers, mini-documentaries, product demonstrations, and gameplay videos. Browse the game guide pages to get information about your favorite games on Wii and Nintendo DS, and you can also recommend games or view recommended games.

It uses a digest format of the most recent videos when you first load the channel, then it lets you skip ahead or choose the ones you want.



What I found most interesting was that you can even click to order games straight from your Wii, if you have the Internet Channel installed. There are not a lot of great examples out there of video shopping yet, but it is definitely interesting to see them evolve around recommendation, referral and sharing. I see this as another indication that the medium is evolving to direct response.

Check it out

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