Why Wii are not fans of Wii weather
The service covers the whole of Europe and more, but it seems that, in its rush to cover as much of the globe as possible, Nintendo has diluted the service too much
I'm a big admirer of the Wii, particularly the way it makes me feel like I'm doing proper exercise when all I'm actually doing is playing games.
One of the things I got excited about last year was the Wii's network connectivity -- it has the ability to download news headlines and weather reports wirelessly over your broadband connection, but the services weren't switched on at launch. Now they have been activated and I'm sorry to report that they are a bit of a letdown.
The news and weather channels are really well put together with some cute graphics and music, and it's very easy to set everything up.
But the problem is that Nintendo has taken too much of a European approach to the services (don't worry, this isn't going to turn into some sort of UKIP rant on the Brussels gravy train). The way the weather channel works is that you select your nearest town to receive updated forecasts -- so far, so good.
Trouble is, there aren't enough locations to choose from to make the forecast feel particularly local. Mine is currently set to a place 15 miles away from where I live, which is lovely when I want to know if it's raining in Northampton, but not so great when I need to know whether I should take my brolly to work.
The service covers the whole of Europe and more, but it seems that, in its rush to cover as much of the globe as possible, Nintendo has diluted the service too much.
It's the same with the news channel -- there are plenty of world news stories, but not enough UK-specific headlines.
It's disappointing given that there are so many ways of getting very localised weather and news reports now -- just pop your postcode into Metcheck for the most detailed forecast I've found on the Web, for example.
These could be really good services. I still like the idea of being able to check out the headlines and the day's weather on my TV with the quirky Wii rather than switching on my PC or squinting at my smart phone. But Nintendo will have to make the information much more localised before I use the channels again.