Nintendo Wants You to Wii Daily

If your console is going to be online 24/7, it might as well be doing something useful.

Never one to tell all at once, Nintendo held onto a few last Wii secrets, which were finally uncloaked at the Electronic Entertainment Expo last month. Part of the subterfuge was something called WiiConnect24, a feature of the console that will let it do useful stuff - even when in standby mode.

If you sit and think for a while, you could probably come up with a lot of potential uses for the service. Wrapping your head around them isn't easy when you're only considering intangibles, so Nintendo president Satoru Iwata gave Japanese site Tech-On an example:

"Let's say your Wii is connected to the Internet in a mode that allows activation on a 24-hour basis. This would allow Nintendo to send monthly promotional demos for the DS, during the night, to the Wii consoles in each household."

"Users would wake up each morning, find the LED lamp on their Wii flashing, and know that Nintendo has sent them something. They would then be able to download the promotional demo from their Wiis to their Nintendo DSs."

Iwata sees as key this pushing of content to users instead of them having to pull it to themselves. It's not clear how third parties would figures into the system, but Nintendo is hoping that by bringing in new stuff regularly, people will be more inclined to turn their systems on every day.

WiiConnect24 is a natural use of new technology, and Iwata stressed that Nintendo was not afraid to ride the bleeding edge, despite its image.

"We have nothing against advanced technology," he explained. "Though many seem to feel that Nintendo is anti-technological, this is totally untrue. There are multiple ways in which you can apply new technology. Some design Formula 1 cars, others design hybrid cars."

"We have merely spent a lot of time discussing which approach would help us increase our customer base."

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games