Monday
September 24, 2012 – Greg Scoblete
While
the world has been rending goat entrails for signs of Apple's TV strategy,
Nintendo made a big and somewhat surprising move into the living room last week
with TVii.
During
the course of a press conference to highlight pricing and release date
information for its new Wii U console, Nintendo also took the wraps off of TVii
- a feature on the console that integrates live and recorded TV content into a
new interface.
Much like Google TV, Nintendo TVii seeks to unify
the world of live broadcasts, recorded TV on a DVR and the world of Internet
video (Netflix et. al.) into a seamless interface. Rather than search through
individual libraries or content sources, TVii pulls them into one unified
search function. Yet unlike Google TV, the Nintendo iteration has a much more
robust set of features - and that's not counting the game play, which is the
Wii's fundamental purpose.
The big selling point for TVii is the Wii U's game-pad,
a touch screen-based game controller that doubles as the TVii's remote. It
provides an icon-driven interface for consumers interested in browsing through
their various video options. It also doubles as a second screen that interacts
with content displayed on the first. If you're enjoying a live sporting event,
the GamePad can display relevant information like standings and other scores.
For movies and TV, you can view IMDB and Wikipedia information on the title.
TVii also promises to provide a customized
experience with user profiles, so the interface and content recommendation
engine produce tailored results.
During the press conference, Nintendo stressed
that TVii would be compatible with all major pay TV providers and DVRs.
However, what it mainly touted was integration with TiVo and it's unclear yet
how much buy-in Nintendo has from pay operators (the Wii U does not require a
direct connection to a set top box to generate program guides or control live
TV). Still, given the embrace of the Xbox as a pay TV platform it's reasonable to assume that Nintendo can partner up as
well.
That
means that two of the three big game consoles have moved much more aggressively
into the TV space and, presumably, Sony's PlayStation can't be that far behind.
In the
all important battle for the living room, it's game on.
