A blue light quietly pulsed from my Nintendo. The slot illumination function was operating as intended, as my Wii had something important to tell me. It was time for a system update. I wasn’t too surprised. I had heard the rumbling from the Internet. Word quickly spread that Nintendo released the News Channel a day early. A previous Nintendo press release mentioned that the News Channel would launch on January 27, 2007. More than two months after the launch of the Wii, today was the day to check out the News Channel. Here is the complete message from Nintendo, with line breaks included…
Thank you very much for
supporting Nintendo.We’re happy to announce
that the News Channel is
now available! Even better,
it’s free of charge.With the News Channel,
you can check out the headlines
and complete text of the most
important news stories covering
regional, international, sports,
entertainment, technology,
business, science, and health
topics.In addition, you can view slide
shows of news stories and even
see where on the globe stories
are breaking.We hope you’ll enjoy all
the features the News
Channel has to offer.Select the Update button on
the bottom right to update
your Wii console and get
access to the News Channel.
I clicked the update button and I started the download process. A few moments later, my Wii restarted. The News Channel was now live. Powered by WiiConnect 24, and a news feed from the Associated Press, I was given free access to instant news articles. Err… OK… so what? AP news articles are not terribly difficult to find. Just go to Yahoo. News articles are plentiful on Internet. Why should anyone care about the News Channel?