Japanese Wii owners can give the gift of VC on the 11th

by JC Fletcher { Dec 6th 2007 at 11:15AM }

The new gift-giving feature of the Wii Shop Channel will be available in Japan starting December 11th, according to Nintendo's demonstration video of the service. And, for those of you new to Nintendo, the service is quite easy to use. You just select a game from the shop as normal, at which point you're given the option to buy it yourself or give it. Then you select the recipient from a list (complete with Mii representations!) and send it away! An error message will tell you if they already have the game, or (we think) if parental controls prevent them from playing it. And then your friend gets a festively wrapped note on their Wii Message Board!

The service is supposed to be available worldwide in time for the holidays, so expect a similar announcement for other regions soon! Then we can all start forcing our preferences on each other.

[Via NeoGAF]

Tags: gift, japan, shop, shop-channel

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

racecar @ Dec 6th 2007 11:27AM

Only problem with this that I can see is that you have to have a Wii to give the gift. Yeah, you can still just buy someone a points card, but it takes the fun out of selecting a specific game to give to someone as a present. It would be a lot more fun to see this service go web-based so Wii-less friends and family can still give the gift of specific VC games to those of us who do have a Wii.

-racecar
http://everybodyvotes.blogspot.com

Nate @ Dec 6th 2007 11:28AM

I was just about to ask, is it possible to send someone a game from a computer. That would be awesome!

Donald @ Dec 6th 2007 12:15PM

Excellent.

Now all we have to do is get Earthbound on VC and the spamming will begin. Muahahaha.

KirbyMeister @ Dec 6th 2007 3:26PM

Starmen.net EB Siege PK Gift'n...
it could happen

UpIrons @ Dec 6th 2007 2:04PM

This will give NintendoWiiFanboy a great new way to give us all prizes of VC games directly to our inboxes. So waddya say NWF? Whens the first contest going to be?

Maybe I should get a free one just for giving you the idea? LOL

Undead Priest @ Dec 6th 2007 4:32PM

I like this idea.

Alisha Karabinus @ Dec 7th 2007 2:17AM

Keep your eyes peeled. *cue mysterious smile*

MidnightScott @ Dec 6th 2007 2:28PM

YAY

RatMasterD21 @ Dec 6th 2007 3:20PM

Very good news now i can make my brother play classics like SMB3

racecar @ Dec 6th 2007 3:59PM

A thought just occurred. If/when this is released elsewhere, are VC games going to continue to be region specific? For instance, can a Japanese user gift an American user a Japanese-only VC release? *That* could get interesting...

-racecar
http://everybodyvotes.blogspot.com

KirbyMeister @ Dec 6th 2007 8:43PM

I would imagine that it wouldn't let you buy for people outside your own country at all. The new gift functionality merely marks on the server that the target user has purchased the game while deducting the WP from the gifting user instead of the target. (If I'm looking at the video right.) The target Wii still connects to Shop Channel and downloads the game - except, it's going to be trying to download from it's own shop channel instead of the Japanese one. Of course, the Shop Channel site the target Wii is connected to will have no clue what was purchased or what to send. So Nintendo would put in some safeguards to prevent that - i.e., no inter-region purchases.

The only other way to make it not buggy would be to syncronize all the Wii Shops, such that they all have the same game catalog - but still, then if someone were to buy you a game only available in Japan, and then a week later the English version were posted, what is the Shop Channel to do?