Monday March 16, 2009 – Shelby Cunningham
As people increasingly use their video game consoles to stream movies and tv shows, will the Nintendo Wii fully step into the game? It has been announced that Nintendo will launch a video channel on the Wii in 2009, but only in Japan and it will only show Nintendo-produced content. While Xbox 360 owners can stream anything from Netflix, Japanese Wii owners will be able to watch cartoons and educational and lifestyle shows created by Nintendo. Some of the content will require payment, but other programs will be free with ads mixed in.
Nintendo hinted that it will offer video channel service overseas later in the year. When that service heads West to the U.S., will Wii owners receive only Nintendo-produced content just like the Japanese owners? If so, will the “walled garden” approach fly with U.S. Wii owers? Japan may embrace the Nintendo-provided content as the brand is wildly popular in Japan, but that brand loyalty may not be as strong in other countries. In the US, console owners have embraced watching hit Hollywood movies and popular TV shows on their video game consoles.
Sure Nintendo made up about 64% of the video game console market in 2008, but a lot of these owners are casual gamers who may not have any interest in streaming video through their Wii. If Nintendo creates original content for different worldwide markets then they will be investing a lot of money and time into something that may not be well received. Although by making some of the content free with advertising they are insuring that people will at least give it a shot. So now all that remains to be seen is what Nintendo will choose to show on this channel outside of Japan.
I suppose Nintendo could populate the US video channel with Pokémon and hope children will still flock to the cuddly Pikachu creature and collect all of the video downloads, but until the content is announced I remain wary of how well a channel full of purely original content will do outside of Japan.
