The Wii News Channel is Now Available

Today, Nintendo launched the News Channel for the Wii a day earlier then promised. The channel is free and takes about 5 minutes to download. I've taken it for a spin and have found to be pretty useless to tell you the truth. When you go into the channel it will give you a menu of news broken down by category [Local, World, Sports, Tech, etc.] After you choose one it will take you to a message board style page with all of the news articles. If a picture is provided with the news article there will be a thumbnail of it next to the headline. You can also browse the news via "slideshow" which is kind of odd. the news and pics will appear on screen, and then a couple of seconds later a new story will appear. All of the news is taken from the AP wire and is actually pretty up to date unlike the weather channel.

A globe is to the right of the articles showing you the location of the news that you are reading. You can click on the globe and browse the news by location as well. This channel is a novelty that will wear off very quickly. I wish Nintendo would spend more time on the Virtual Console first party games and actual ONLINE play instead of releasing things like this. But, since it IS free I can't really complain too much. Happy Reading!