Wii Video On Demand Report: Free Kirby, Lots of Sesame Street, Few Movies

By Spencer . November 25, 2009 . 4:07pm

Wii Video On Demand Report: Free Kirby, Lots of Sesame Street, Few Movies Nintendo add a new room to their Wii no Ma (Wii’s Room) channel. In addition to the free-to-watch TV and hustling houseplant, the Wii no Ma channel now includes a theater room.

 

When you walk upstairs all of the Miis hanging out in the virtual space move and huddle around the big screen. A video, usually a trailer reel, automatically plays. You can click on the screen to expand it or poke the posters to see other clips.

 

The Theater Room service is a hub for paid content, but it’s more like a pay-per-view channel than a video store. Wii Points spent on Pokemon episodes are for rental only. Nintendo launched the service last week with lots of family friendly content. Pokemon, Kirby, and Sesame Street (lots of it, in English) are available to watch. The cheapest episodes are 50 Wii Points, so a 30 minute rental runs 50 cents.

 

Warner Brothers Japan is part of the service, but none of their movies are online. All Warner Brothers brought are trailers for “Gran Torino” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. Both are free. Actually, the movie selection is extremely limited with old movies such as “Toki wo Kakeru Shojo” a film from 1983 that costs 300 Wii Points ($3) to rent.

 

The paid content selection has over 100 videos to rent and a few you can watch for free. An episode of Meat or Die, two episodes of Kirby, and J-League soccer matches are some of the things you can watch at no cost. It’s unclear how often Nintendo plans to update this, but things like this make the Theater Room worth checking out… even though it suffers from buffering issues away from Japan.

 

It will be interesting to see if Nintendo brings a similar service to North America. There’s more competition here since you can purchase videos on an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Perhaps, Nintendo’s best bet is doing what they are doing in Japan – culling family friendly content and putting sport highlight reels online.


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  • Aoshi00

    I checked it out the other day too, they don't have much yet other than Kirby and some vintage anime and old school kids shows.. the low video quality don't look too appealing either, while you could stream things w/ Netflix or rent/buy movies in HD on Live and PSN. I have a feeling this wouldn't really take off, I'm not sure if Jpn Wii owners would feel like watching movies that way…

    I'm curious if they would rent out the hollywood movies “dubbed in Jpn”, since they showed some dubbed trailers like “Night at the Museum” w/ Ben Stiller spking Jpn! I've seen all those movies alrdy, but I would gladly pay a buck or two to watching it dubbed, just for the fun of it.

    Too bad we can't access any of the videos on the Jpn PSN or Xbox Live from outside of Japan though… even if we're willing to pay..

  • shion16

    wii and 480p videos or PSN 1080p videos
    ……….wow is a hard decision

  • Chow

    I still refuse to rent videos from these types of stores. But this is mainly because I don't see how I'd be able to do it with my connection speed and my wireless router's reliability.

    …and also the fact that I'm in Canada and can't get the PSN Video Store anyway.

  • dv8shun

    Obviously. 480i VHS quality videos on a 27-inch CRT.

  • dv8shun

    Plus since you're a fellow Canadian, you may be like me and have a low bandwidth limit despite paying a premium price.

  • dv8shun

    Obviously. 480i VHS quality videos on a 27-inch CRT.

  • dv8shun

    Plus since you're a fellow Canadian, you may be like me and have a low bandwidth limit despite paying a premium price.

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