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Nintendo Wii U launches without TVii streaming service

The Wii U's TVii service, which lets you watch telly on your console, won't be up and running at launch, according to Nintendo.

Joe Svetlik Reporter
Joe has been writing about consumer tech for nearly seven years now, but his liking for all things shiny goes back to the Gameboy he received aged eight (and that he still plays on at family gatherings, much to the annoyance of his parents). His pride and joy is an Infocus projector, whose 80-inch picture elevates movie nights to a whole new level.
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Joe Svetlik
2 min read

Nintendo's Wii U launched yesterday in the US and will arrive in two weeks here in the UK, but the console will initially lack its TVii service, according to details in a press release about the launch.

The TVii service, which lets you watch telly on your Wii U, will be activated in December, according to the release. The streaming apps -- Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, Netflix and YouTube -- will be arriving in "the coming weeks". If any of our American cousins were looking forward to watching TV shows and movies on their Wii U on day one, they'll likely be disappointed.

In the UK though, there's no word on when we can expect to get video streaming services, as Nintendo hasn't sealed the deals with the right partners yet. Realistically, it's also highly unlikely it will manage to do so before the end of the month either. Head to the UK Nintendo site, and you'll see the message that "Nintendo is working with other partners to bring video experiences to Wii U that will take advantage of the integrated second-screen experience. Additional details will be released at a later time."

The delay doesn't bode will, although many other features such as the Miiverse -- which lets you share with friends what you've been up to -- Wii U Chat and the web browser will be enabled at launch. You should obviously be able to play games without any problems as well.

Nintendo showed off its Wii U recently, and revealed it only has 3GB of storage, which means you'll need streaming to be up and running if you want to store more than a handful of movies on it. It also recently aired the first Wii U advert "How U Will Play Next" on YouTube and Facebook, which you can see below.