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See that flashing blue light on your Wii? No, it's not more spam from WiiLoaded's Cloud. The Nintendo Channel has finally been released in the U.S. and can be purchased for free from the Wii Shop Channel. Once you've installed it you will be shown a short intro video that contains various game footage as well as info about the upcoming WiiWare service. After you get past the video and are brought to the main interface you will see pages of videos that you can browse. Each video pertains to a specific service or game for the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, or the Virtual Console. The videos that you see are streamed from Nintendo's servers. There are controls for the video that allow you to control the volume, view the video in full screen mode, as well as selecting a particular section of the video. There is also the option to continue browsing while you watch the video and if you choose to do so the video will shrink and move to the top of the screen with the list below it. It will remain that way until you select another video.
The Nintendo Channel has more than one function and another function is being able to browse the library by filtering the results. You can select the videos to be shown by title, category, or type of gamer you are such as 'casual' or 'hardcore'. These filter options can be found by clicking on the "more information" button that is located underneath each video. After you have set up your preferences you will be taken to a page that will list items that fit your profile. There you will find some links to the products that are listed and they can be viewed in the Internet Channel by clicking on them.
A third function is the ability to rate a game. If there is a game that you have played for more than one hour that is on the list then you can give that game a rating. You will then be asked some questions about the game such as "who do you think would enjoy this title?" and Nintendo will use your answers to make the filtering more reliable. It's not really about if the game is great or not because you've only been playing it for an hour but is just there to give others an idea of what they have to look forward to and if it's the kind of game that they are interested in.
The fourth and last feature is a big one. You can send demos of DS games to your Nintendo DS. Gamers have been asking for this for quite a while now and their prayers are finally answered. You can now try out the demo that you've been on the fence about. Currently there are not so many titles available for download but the channel has just gone live within the last couple of hours and there will be more content added later. So what are you waiting for? Get to downloading!
