Previously, they were content to let you use their games to monitor how much you weighed and how often you walked, but now Nintendo of Japan is showing an increased interest in what's going on with your body. In April, they will launch the "Wii Fit Body Check Channel", a Wii channel co-developed with NEC, Hitachi, and Panasonic Medical Solutions.

The Channel will allow users to send BMI data from Wii Fit as well as the step data recorded from the Personal Trainer: Walking pedometer, and receive personalized guidance from health professionals about how to stay healthy. Our predictions: if you are only sending in data from one game, you will be told, "Maybe you should buy the other game too".

It's possible that this Japanese channel relates to the "Nintendo Active Health" trademark registered in Europe earlier this month. If it does refer to the same initiative, then Nintendo may be planning to offer health advice worldwide! Good news for people who want a game company all up in their business.

[Via Engadget]

Source -- Hitachi
Source -- Nintendo

There must really be something to this Nintendo/Dentsu "Wii no Ma Channel," the video service announced last week. Times Online calls it a "television channel" featuring "a family- oriented blizzard of cartoons, "brain-training" quizzes, cookery, educational and other lifestyle shows." In other words, not just occasional offerings.

The prospect of a Wii-based television channel apparently has traditional television channels worried. According to the Times, a Fuji TV executive called the possibility of Nintendo media dominance "the stuff of television producers' nightmares", expressing fears that Wii-based programming could cut into prime-time viewership for Japanese television.

Thanks, unnamed Fuji Television executive! We're much more excited about this Channel now.

[Via GoNintendo]

As the New Year approaches and some of you are making your resolutions, it's a natural time to reflect on who you are and who you would like to be. Two years ago when I brought home my Wii and was sculpting a likeness of myself in Mii form, I was doing just that sort of reflecting.

Recently, Sony opened up their new Playstation Home service to public beta and Microsoft unrolled the New Xbox Experience. With these additions, it has become possible to create an effigy of ourselves across each platform, so I'd like to give you my impressions of my own three representations. I can tell you right now, a couple of these ain't pretty.

When it was revealed that Nintendo's latest Channel would be one that reads fortunes, to say we were surprised would've been a huge understatement. Whether or not this will release to territories outside of Japan is anybody's guess, but what we want to know is would you want it to? Do you want to have your fortune read? Head past the break and voice your opinion in our poll below.

Thanks to the Japanese launch of the Wii Speak Channel, we can now see a bit of a preview of what's coming up for the rest of us (tomorrow in Europe, ??? in North America) in the world of talking at our TVs. Nintendo has opened their Wii Speak Channel page, featuring screenshots of the Channel's features, like the "puppy" feature in the screen above!

Well, actually, it's the photo sharing feature, which allows photos loaded from an SD card to be shown during chat. Also pictured: the Channel's voice message function, which allows players to record voice messages for Wii Friends and send them to the Message Board. This results in a text message on special a Wii Speak Channel background with the note "This message was recorded by your friend using the Wii Speak Channel." We always get an Animal Crossing vibe from special "stationery." If you'd like to see more of this Channel, a video is also available at the Japanese site.

[Via Famitsu]

A pleasant surprise will have greeted Japanese Wii owners when they awoke this morning: a brand new Wii channel! Spencer from Siliconera freed up the necessary 82 blocks of space to download the "Today And Tomorrow's Lucky Fortune-Telling Channel," and wrote about his experiences.

Truthfully, it sounds very cute and novel, if a tad pointless. Six Miis can be added to the channel, which uses each Mii's preset birthday to calculate how lucky they are -- as you can see above, Mr. Green Jumper will be enjoying some good fortune! If you're down on your luck, you can change clothes to a luckier color by holding down the A and B buttons. Click on a Mii, and you'll be able to read what the future holds in five categories: love, work, school, communication, and money; while this Mii is pretty loved up, she is also penniless.

There are other modes to play with, including a friendship compatibility test, the results of which change daily. You can also get your Miis to ask about a certain subject, and receive three random words for you to interpret yourself.

It's been awhile since we talked about the Opera browser for the Wii. How often do you use the Internet Channel? We know some of you use it to participate in Game Night, which is awesome, but how else do you enjoy the console's ability to surf the interwebs? Did you get a Wii too late to get the Internet Channel for free? Hate the browser? Love it? Tell us already!

We've been thinking: when was the last time you even used the Photo Channel? For us, trying to recall such a memory is an impossibility. We have no clue when we last touched the thing. But, what about you? Showed off some pictures from that vacation in Greece you took? Subjected friends and/or family to an endless amount of pictures of your dog? When was the last time you used it?

This one is a bit odd.

IGN recently published a kind of "What if?" story about connecting the DS and Wii versions of Guitar Hero together, to form some kind of Voltron-like super game. That's all well and good and we'll be the first to say that daydreaming is fun, but there was something curious tucked away within the three pages there.

"With a Wii channel already in the works that would output DS's audio from your TV speakers, it would be an impressive next step to sync the DS game with Wii, and use Guitar Hero Wii to truly interact with the pocket version." Wait a minute, there's a Channel in the works to output your DS's audio from your TV speakers? This is the first we've heard of anything like this (only the Speaker Channel comes to mind, but that's specifically for Band Brothers DX, so it doesn't fit).

What do you guys think? Error on IGN's part, or did they let something slip?

[Thanks, Sonic_13!]

Wii lovers and fans of speakerphones across Europe, the WiiSpeak Channel has been dated for your region. The Channel and peripheral will debut alongside Animal Crossing: Let's Go to the City on December 5th, less than a month after North America receives the game and service. Sadly, there's no word on what the bundle will cost you and if it'll be much more expensive than the bundle we're getting in North America. We'd like to think it will cost around the same, but we know how you guys get the shaft sometimes.

Nintendo of Japan has just started a new Wii channel that allows users to view and even print digital photos from the Wii. Through a collaboration with Fujifilm, Japanese Wii users can now order prints of digital camera photos through the Wii for 30 yen (28 cents) each. Users can also purchase special Wii Photo Books for 1,575 yen ($14,71), or deluxe Mario-themed Wii Photo Books for 2,480 yen ($23.16).

In addition, the service offers meishi (like Japanese business cards, but even more prevalent) in multiple colors, emblazoned with the Mii of the user's choice, at a rate of 500 yen per 30 cards.

We think this is a really cool and unique feature that we wouldn't mind trying out oursel -- oh, wait, we're supposed to be "hardcore gamers." We almost forgot to hate it and blame this new service for the death of gaming! Oh, man, how embarrassing.

Update: Now with more video!

[Via NeoGAF]

This week brings plenty of videos for you to watch on the Everyone's Nintendo Channel. From a look at how All-Play works in Tiger Woods 09, right down to another video of Alyson with Wii Fit. So, check out the list below, situated in handy bullet-point form:

• Get Wii Fit with Alyson: Balance Games
• Major League Eating info video
• MLB Power Pros 2008 info video
• Carnival Games info video (DS)
• Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility info video
• Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness info video (DS)
  
• The Sims 2 Apartment Pets info video (DS)
• Tiger Woods: PGA Tour 09 All-Play Video 2

We've got the goods on the Nintendo Channel. We're experts. With all the killer stuff available online elsewhere around the world, Nintendo also falls into the "expert" category for having the good sense to launch the service in Australia and Europe. Why, it's not even very late!

PAL gamers can now catch up on a bunch of videos and interviews they have been eagerly waiting for, including the highly-anticipated DS demo download service, which should prove to be a hit for those tech-savvy kids and grandmas. It's a free download, so make sure to get connected and updated for the release on May 30. Like, tomorrow. Cancel all those dates, fellas!

After the surprise release of the Nintendo Channel today, we decided a video walkthrough was in order. So we've gone ahead and hooked up our fancy schmancy video equipment to get you this direct-feed footage of the Channel at work. Hopefully it'll help some of you determine whether or not this Channel is worth your download. Personally, we think it is.

Watch as we check out the many informative videos available, as well as the plethora of DS demos on tap.

Those of you who booted up the Wii this morning and checked out the Mario Kart Channel may have noticed that the first competition has finally been opened for entry! The process is simple: complete three laps of Mario Circuit as quickly as possible, upload your time to Nintendo's big list 'o times, wait until the deadline (May 9th or May 10th, depending on your timezone), and get ready to bask in internet glory. Hurray, right?

Wrong.

When we think of Mario Kart time trials, we think of gradually shaving milliseconds off of our best times, of taking every corner as finely as possible, of finding the best way to utilize our three mushrooms, of locating the perfect racing line, and of keeping our noses just ahead of the time trial ghosts. Yet this first Mario Kart Wii competition totally misses the point.

For instance, it's not a time trial at all, but a fully fledged race, complete with eleven opponents and all the usual items. In other words, you can take every corner as flawlessly as possible, only to get blue-shelled on the final straight. Which doesn't strike us as a terribly fair contest. We guess this is meant to level the playing field for newer players, but shouldn't more skillful players be justly rewarded?

Anyway, if you do want to try your hand at being robbed of a deserved victory, this blogger's best time so far is a quite appalling 2:03.325.