A bunch of info for the Wii was announced today. It’ll launch on November 19th for $280 Canadian. It includes The Wii remote with a strap, similar to the DS, nunchuck attachment, Wii AC adaptor, Wii A/V cable, Wii console stand, sensor bar, sensor bar stand and two AA batteries. Besides the delay of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, almost all the news was good. I’m not going to detail it all, but DSmeet has a good summary of all the major announcements. I’m especially looking forward to the newly announced channel features, which are essentially sub-categories on the Wii menu. The Wii’s weather channel, Opera browser, Virtual Console and Mii features are all set up like this. Wii.com describes Mii in some detail on their site:

Fun 3-D caricatured portraits of users, or Miis, created in this channel can be used on characters across a variety of Wii software. In addition to storing Miis on the Wii, several Miis can be stored in a user’s Wii Remote and taken to a friend’s house to play on another Wii console. Each member of the family can have his or her Wii Remote personalized with their own Mii.

This channel probably also includes the memory-card-like features Nintendo talked about earlier, where you could take your data with you to your friends house and have your game data available for multiplayer matches. I think that would be really cool, you could have access to characters your friend hasn’t unlocked on his copy of the game yet, you would have all your EXP in a RPG, etc. There is a lot of potential in this area. So, while I was disappointed with a some things (Wii launches in white only, MP3:C delayed, the price of the Wiimote and nunchuck controller…) these channel announcements are making this look up. There were some good announcements about the Virtual Console, too. I’ll link to an article about those, though. While I’m on that topic I must say what a great idea it was to make gift cards for the Wii. I know Puretracks has done it and Xbox Live and iTunes ended up doing the same thing, but I still love the idea. It just makes it simple for people to buy things who don’t have a credit card. I’m sure it will allow Nintendo to sell a lot more Virtual Console games, too, especially considering the average age of their audience.

Well, Nintendo, the secrets are finally done with. Now make sure you don’t pull a “360 Shortage” incident and you could give your competition a real run for their money.

Trackback from your own blog. Add a comment.