Watching the photo channel in action

by David Hinkle { Sep 21st 2006 at 12:00PM }

Over at Wii.com, a video demonstrating the capabilities of the Wii's Photo Channel is available for your viewing pleasure. Other videos on the site are available as well, documenting other Wii Channel functions such as the News Channel and impressive Forecast Channel.

With such a comprehensive lineup of non-game activities available on the console, will Nintendo achieve their goal of hooking non-gamers with the Wii as they have with the DS? Or are these channels merely full of useless features for gamers?

Tags: channels, nintendo, wii

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neko Tsukimi @ Sep 21st 2006 12:28PM

I think it will be attractive to the non-gamers. Right out the box, you don't need to physically go out and buy games for it. With wireless internet in your home and your credit card, you can be tempted time after time to download games from yesteryear and of course fiddle around with pictures from cameras.

I really don't see most gamers even fooling around with the picture channel... Or really any of the channels other than Mii Channel and Internet Channel (and of course the VC Channels, but that's not a non-gamer one). But I am looking forward to Picture Channel. I could have a lot of fun with that in periods of lull.

Lindsay @ Sep 21st 2006 12:33PM

I think it will be fun to mess around with. I don't see it as being all that useful, but still...

Michael Pastore @ Sep 21st 2006 1:26PM

Hopefully there will be built in functionality to send pictures to your friends through the Photo Channel. That would definitely be cool. Maybe if the kids tell grandma they can swap pictures with each other using the Wii she'd buy it just for that?

Neko Tsukimi @ Sep 21st 2006 3:24PM

Re: 3

Actually, you can send stuff from Wii to cellphones, computers, and other Wii (and vice versa).

thebigL @ Sep 21st 2006 5:09PM

Though this may be enticing to nongamers it still seems gimicky. I wish they would spend mor time making somes games that might attract gamers too. Like a sick online FPS, or an addicting MMORPG. I was really expecting Nintendo to be more gamer friendly including nongamer friendly. The things I want to see out of Nintendo in the future are more online games, more mature games, and less cell shaded games. I also think it would be cool if they had external hardrive capability so they could make an mmorpg. Like i said before i was really expecting more out of Nintendo, and unless they are hiding more info about their system i'm going to be relatively dissapointed. Thats not to sya i'm not still excited about the future of the Wii, i'm still dead set on buying it, on launch date. Woah sorta went overboard there. This is just my 2 cents, I hate that phrase.

Next-Gen-Gamer @ Sep 22nd 2006 1:29AM

I'm surprised you didn't talk about the Mii channel. Everyone I've talked to (and I) all seem to share the same opinion. Other than the Mii channel, there really wasn't anything else interesting (that's been shown so far).

I personally won't use most of the channels, but it's good to have just in case (if I'm planning to go somewhere, and want a quick look at the weather before putting down the controller).

OSW @ Sep 22nd 2006 5:58AM

isn't video compatability awesome???????

Ipsum @ Sep 22nd 2006 10:18PM

What the hell? Nintendo makes one cel-shaded game (Wind Waker) and suddenly all their games are cel-shaded?

And really, how is it that everyone has completely forgotten the success that is the DS? It was hardly selling at launch, and now look how far it has come. A little patience, my friends. Please.