The pictures! They’re moving!
Watching videos was a breeze. I clicked a video I wanted to watch (an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto about Wii Fit) and it loaded surprisingly quickly and without a hitch, and played without any hitches from beginning to end. While the video playback isn’t in widescreen and there didn’t seem to be a full screen option for viewing, you could enlarge the video by clicking on it. The image was big enough to enjoy the interview and the videos seemed to vary in size, depending on what their subject matter was.
I highly suggest tuning into the absolutely ridiculous Ghost Squad commercial. That video also is a good indicator of my other problem with the Nintendo Channel at the moment. Most of the videos were of games already released, and while the opening trailer for the channel showed some WiiWare games there was a serious lack of representation on that front once you got inside. I’m guessing this will be remedy over time, especially once WiiWare actually launches.
There is also an option to “recommend” games. At first I thought this would allow me to recommend a video or game page to a friend but it actually means that you recommend the game to Nintendo. In short it’s market research. When you click on the option, you’re taken to a list of games that you’ve played for over an hour (sadly No More Heroes, along with a multitude of other games I had played for over an hour, were missing) that you can “recommend.” Once you choose a game you’re asked who in the household liked it more, men or women. Once you answer this it asks the age of the person who enjoyed the game most and then asks that person to rate how highly they would recommend the game. Then you get to classify the game as casual or hardcore and choose whether or not it is more fun alone or with friends. At this point I was wondering in what way this was recommending anything to anyone since it basically seemed that I was filling out a survey on the game for Nintendo. I do find the questions they’re asking (gender, game style, who you play with) interesting and love to see the end results on a chart – because charts are awesome – but really it has nothing to do with recommendations.
