Nintendo to launch news service through Wii
Last Updated: Thursday, January 25, 2007 | 9:39 AM ET
The Associated Press
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Video gamers could get some help keeping in touch with the outside world this weekend as Nintendo Co. launches an online news service through its popular Wii console.
The Wii News Channel, scheduled to debut Saturday, will feature top news stories and photographs from news services such as the Associated Press. Consoles with a broadband internet connection and the Opera web browser will be able to access the free news channel, which will offer news in multiple languages.
There were no immediate plans to sell advertising space on the service, said Perrin Kaplan, vice-president for marketing at Nintendo's U.S. headquarters in Redmond.
News will be displayed through an interactive map that users can navigate with the Wii's wireless controller, Kaplan said.
"The beauty of it is it zooms in and out of areas of the world. So if you really want to focus on regional news or national news versus international, you just blow up the map [of that specific area]."
The AP has a two-year contract to provide news and photos to Nintendo and would like to provide multimedia in the future, said Jane Seagrave, vice-president of new media markets for the New York-based news co-operative. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"It's a very innovative new application of what we're doing generally, which is to try to get our content to new audiences on new platforms," Seagrave said.
The Wii has been a surprise hit for Nintendo as it competes with Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 consoles.
"The Nintendo Wii demographic is definitely a wider demographic than your traditional hard-core gamer," said Billy Pidgeon, a video game industry analyst at IDC in New York. "It kind of makes sense for other types of content to be made available on the Wii."
Nintendo isn't the only company hoping to offer more from video-game consoles with online connections. The Xbox scored an early hit with its Xbox Live online gameplay system and has since begun offering more perks to internet-connected users.
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