Wii Don’t Need No Education!

Today Nintendo launched the Wii news channel, an online interactive news channel for it’s Online24 service available to all Wii game consoles with an internet connection.  Essentially, the channel acts as an interactive news source where users can browse a digital globe, browsing different regions of the world in search of stories originating from specific locals.  This seems kind of pointless, yet kind of neat and fun.  Is there anything else we should be making note of here?

So I read this story and thought to myself, “this is kinda cool….I guess”.  Then I knew something wasn’t right…or not right enough.  I knew this was new territory that Nintendo had stumbled into, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  Then it hit me….twice.  There are two ways that Nintendo has just revolutionized gaming consoles, the internet, TV, and how we get information.  Let me be a jerk and tell you exactly what they are.

#1.  The 3d virtual globe on Wii news will eventually find it’s way into google maps/earth(is it there already?).  Imagine using google maps/earth to locate news stories, shopping centers, or even people.  To most people, google maps/earth is either a nifty way of finding directions, or just a fun tool to waste time.  I know there are plug-ins galore being developed for the software, but I think Wii may have just sparked a movement in this sort of information delivery.  Imagine a future Google Earth program that can hover in a minimized window on your desktop…or even BE your desktop.  You set perameters for when and why you want the software to notify you and when it does, the magic begins.  The globe would rotate and zoom to the exact location of the news story and swing out a text story with pictures or maybe even video.  The satellite imagery could even be accessed to help explain the situation that’s unfolding.  This opens the door of ideas for Google to really push and expand the bounderies of Google Earth and toy with the notion of other ideas.  Maybe team up with real-estate companies to showcase homes or partner with weather.com to give us realtime 3D weather and forecasts.  Maybe over-protective parents could use GPS enabled cellphones and Google Earth to track their brats in real-time.  Maybe fedex could benefit from Google Earth by allowing customers to see exactly where their package is (once again, in real-time) via Google Earth.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.  I know this post is suppose to be about the Wii, and I’ve sidetracked my ramblings to Google Earth, but it’s the idea that I’m really interested in, not the companies or products.

#2.  Wii Channels.  The idea of “channels” accessed by a game console via the internet is quite a shift from the norm if you ask me.  Game consoles definitely made a break towards mainstream versatility when they started acting more like streamlined entertainment computers, and less like adolescent one-trick ponies.  To offer channels of information over a console DEFINITELY ups it’s value.  So far the Wii has news, weather, and shopping channels.  Who’s to say they can’t include all the other avenues of entertainment that the world of cable television has introduced us to?  Imagine a day when cable TV is delivered via the internet, allowing us to see and do so much more than we can imagine with regular old TV.  Then imagine that all you need to do to get all this wonderfulness is to purchase a game console(which also plays games by the way).  I picture a future(actually, this is already happening) where I can watch a football game and have my fantasy football stats updated in real-time over the football game as it’s being played.  Skype/Voip technology could be included to allow video phones to finally become a reality, and in the ultimate sneak-move, game consoles would usher in the era of the TRUE living room PC. I know some of these ideas are surfacing in one form or another on consoles, computers and other consumer electronics, but none of it feels mainstream yet.  There’s still improvements to be made to get these ideas to the people that make them part of society, the average Joe Blow consumer.  Not gamers, and not PC geeks.  NORMAL PEOPLE.

Bottom line to all of this….don’t just look at specs.  The xbox 360 and playstation 3 got all the love because of their massive technical capabilities.  Hell, the Wii isn’t even HD.  But who cares?  Nintendo has made some bold smart moves towards a better future for video games and general home entertainment for everybody, not just gamers.  I applaud their foward thinking and it’s gonna be fairly aggrivating to watch all of their great ideas get ripped off in future console generations and other software and hardware designed for all areas of the consumer electronics market.  At the same time, I think that’s the only way some of these great ideas will ever get notice from the general public who maybe doesn’t even know what a Wii is.