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Revolution: Now Part 6: Channel Surfing - Published by N-Philes, Apr 6, 2007

The first page of my Wii Menu contains eight elementary channels that no Wii should be without: Disk Channel (if that even qualifies as a real channel), Mii Channel, Photo Channel, Wii Shop Channel, Forecast Channel, News Channel, Internet Channel (Beta), and Everybody Votes Channel. Twelve spaces minus the eight that I'm using leaves four completely empty channels. Because of my slight streak of obsessive compulsiveness, I've grouped my nine Virtual Console downloads together on the second page.

I've read many articles from many other gaming sites, both big and small, about what kinds of channels they would like to see pop up. To be honest, I haven't been greatly inspired by my fellow writer's ideas on how to fill up the rest of my channels, so I've thought long and hard about what I would produce if I were given unlimited sway in Kyoto. And while it's not likely that I'll ever speak to Miyamoto, let alone boss him around, I can dream.

But first, I must protest a popular choice for a future channel. A Stock Channel is a terrible idea. Given how slow Wii has proven to update the weather, to send messages, and to add friends, stock quotes could be hours behind, which like weather, isn't particularly useful. Not to mention, there's no spinning globe to distract you from that gact. Also, such information would be useful mostly during trading hours, when people who have stocks are probably at work, or at least nowhere near a Wii. There's only one reason why I wouldn't mind a Stock Channel, and that i because Nintendo has experimented with delivering live stock updates through their hardware. On the Famicom. It would be like a full circle of Nintendo experimentation.

The Everybody Votes channel confused many people when it launched because it was completely unexpected. Everyone and their grandmothers were so focused on the obvious DS Download, Wii Demo, and Digitally-Distributed Game Channels that it seemed to come from out of the ballpark, let alone from left field. While the Everybody Votes Channel seems trivial, I believe that it's a small part of a grand vision. It's from here where many of my ideas stem.

I will take you through several channel ideas that would be great on Wii, at least in theory. If you work at Nintendo, feel free to forward this to Miyamoto-san.

Mii Channel Plus

Long ago, Miyamoto spoke of an idea he had for the GameCube. Within that system would be this digital garden of sorts that would grow as you saved more and more games to a memory card. This idea was ultimately scrapped, but it may be time to revisit it. The Mii Channel right now is a large, white space of nothingness, occupied by lonely Mii characters who must be tired of jumping and sneezing and talking to one another. I'm surprised they haven't committed mass suicide by now.

The channel could benefit from, well, more. What if the Mii Plaza were to get a fountain, or a statue? What if the Mii Channel were to grow with each new game that you play? The Mii Channel could be much more compelling if it were always changing and the Miis had something to do.

Imagine if they got a couple of mini-putt holes when you make a save file for Tiger Woods '07, an RC airplane because you played Heatseeker, an invincibility star because you found one in Super Paper Mario, or some electrifying creatures for playing Elebits. All of a sudden, some Miis gather around a golf course to watch a fellow Mii take a putt, while another nearby Mii watches his RC airplane circle above. Maybe he'll sneeze and lose control, causing nearby Miis to run away as it crashes to the ground. Of course if you don't want yellow Elebits terrorizing your Miis or another Mii slashing around a Master Sword, you can throw them back into a Treasure Chest of sorts, where you can swap in and out different unlockables from different games.

The Mii Channel Plus would be a bit like introducing the concept of the Xbox 360's achievements system in that it rewards players for playing a game. No trophies, no points, and no scorecards; just toys to amuse your growing Mii population. This new Plaza and all its newfound toys would probably benefit form a new perspective. Using the 1 and 2 buttons could gradually bring you from the over the top action we have now to a ground's eye view. Throw some simple backgrounds like the ones found in Nintendogs, and suddenly, the functionality of the Mii Channel has grown along with the number of reasons to visit it.

Mii Village Channel

In Mii Village, you go from the Overlord that you are in the Mii Channel to actually controlling a Mii character. The Mii (maybe one Mii per controller for multiplayer action) that you choose leaves the gates at the entrance of the Mii Plaza into the rest of "Mii Town". The Mii Village would make use of the Wii's internal clock, country setting, and Weather Channel for mapping real weather and time.

Let's face it, as simple and effective as the Mii Channel is, there aren't a whole lot of options for customization. Plus fashions change over time, and so should your Miis. The Mii Village would include a strip mall of sorts for free Mii upgrades. The salon is the place to stop for the newest hair colors and styles (including a natural look for those red heads out there). New shirt and pant colors and patterns would also be available at the "Clothes R Mii" store, along with a kiosk where you can customize a pattern right on your shirt or hat. The boutique would show off new accessories like eye patches, belts, hats, and the like. Maybe some things would only be available on certain days, maybe only for a certain number of days. Either way, it's completely free.

Once your new Mii is all pimped out, you can send it to your friends. Nintendo can put the WiiConnect24 service to good use and make the Wiis update automatically so that your friend's Wii doesn't explode when it discovers that it has no idea how to generate a striped shirt. After all, that Wii needs to be online to receive the Mii in the first place, right? Your friend might discover something new and want to go look for that shirt or hairstyle. Dare I say offer to trade items that are out of circulation?

Besides, doesn't it make sense to have more Mii creation options to go in hand with Miyamoto's forthcoming "Judge Mii" channel?

While in the village, you are able to enter Arcade Park to play simple, free board and card games, similar to the ones available at Yahoo Games: Chess, Minesweeper Flags, Backgammon, Solitaire, Bejewelled, Battleship, etc. You would need an internet connection to play them, but perhaps a couple could remain in the town for offline use.

If you're alone and jonesin' for a match of Connect-4, simply play with another person through WiiConnect 24. Each game would have its own hut, like a room or lobby, where other gamers from around the world could meet up to play. Your score would fluctuate depending on your performance in rated matches. Details of the match, including the name of the person with whom you played, would be posted to the Wii Message Board. If you had a good time (and the updated parental controls allow), you can add new friends to the Village Log, a special friends list specifically for the Arcade Park. If your new friend accepts your invite, you'll know if he or she is online and if he or she is available for a game. You'll be able see how many of your other friends from the Wii Address Book are using the Mii Village – straight from the Wii Menu interface.

Remember Nintendo's Stage Debut idea? It's the perfect backdrop for just hangin' out and to interact with random items (perhaps being different every time you start up the Mii Village) like brooms, trampolines, and juggling balls, and alll the items that you've unlocked for the Mii Channel Plus. Walk into a classroom and collaborate on chalkboard artwork, play hangman, tic-tac-toe, whatever. Check out to the park and play on the swings, dive into the pond, or fly a kite. Or head over to the dance hall and groove to the beat. There were a number of other areas in Stage Debut that we never got the fortune to learn about, but I imagine they would also go well with the Mii Village.

Of course, upon starting the channel, you can decide to invite friends, or seek them out and beam into their villages. If they happen to be in someone else's village, you can request an invite and introduce yourself (just don't be cutting down any trees!).

The Mii Village would come with some options that include enabling/disabling voice chat (assuming there's a mic on the way for upcoming Wii games), on-screen keyboard chat, and preset emotional outbursts, which are triggered via a menu. Your Mii essentially becomes an animated emoticon that you can use to share your feelings, whether it be a Animal Crossingesque floral aura while checking your opponent with the knight that he failed to capture, or an angry scowl as he kicks a beach ball at you.

And if you allow it, people in your Wii Address Book can go through your Village and check out your Mii Channel. The Mii Channel should feel like it's always active, even when your Wii is in Stand-by. This is a simple way of accomplishing that.

Anyway, it's time to move away from something that, post-GDC 2007, sounds like an attempt to copy the PlayStation Home concept.

Globe Explorer

The Weather and News Channels were disappointing considering the obvious missed tie-in possibility with Google Earth. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Google Earth is nothing more than the world's biggest globe. Once you get over the fact that you can see your house (if you're lucky enough to live in a hi-res city), there isn't much point to it given Google Maps is much more practical and functional.

But what if you could have a small application that allows you to quickly pan around the world and see the most prominent buildings and landmarks. The Statue of Liberty, the Great Pyramids, Mount Fuji, the Himalayas, the Mariana trench, the Great Wall, Ayer's Rock, the CN Tower. The user could spin the small globe, seeing all the sites appearing to jet up larger than life. Zooming into the planet would help to decongest some of the denser areas of interest. Clicking on a particular landmark of interest would pinpoint its exact location on Earth and provide a simple description of its historical and geological significance.

Also included would be a simple game where you have to find a given landmark's location on the planet, or if you're given a location, choose which landmark belongs there.

There are obvious educational benefits to such a channel, but given a large database of places to visit, such a channel could be fun just to explore. Maybe you could even take a "picture" of a Mii in front of a particular spot of interest, then use in the Photo Channel and send it to your Wii friends.

Software Channel

Over six million people have Wiis right now, beautifully (or not) snuggled beside a TV or nesteled into a home theatre system. But not every one of them visits N-Philes. Or IGN. Or even Nintendo.com. Their only idea of what games are available for the Wii involves checking a flyer or walking into a store. The casual and fringe gamers aren't going to dedicate time to learn about upcoming games the way that harder core audiences do, so Nintendo sould make it easy for them and bring that information to them. A Software Channel could easily let Wii owners the world over check out what exciting new games they could be playing. Adding DS releases to the newsletter may stimulate more DS sales (or wind of such a channel might convince a few handheld gamers to pick up a Wii), while adding detailed information of Virtual Console releases could stimulate a few downloads.

Some day in the near future, someone checking out this channel will say to themselves, "Planet Puzzle League is coming out next week? What is that?" With a couple of clicks, he or she can read about that and any upcoming or released game, watch gameplay movies and trailers, download a demo to the Wii or DS, and even rate the game once it's been played.

Linking this service with Nintendo's Master Game List (assuming they update it some day) could provide gamers with descriptions of new and upcoming games, screenshots, trailers, and yes even demos. Instead of having dedicated DS Demo, Wii Demo, and Game Trailer Channels, throw them together in an all-encompassing, functional channel. Such a channel could be a great asset for everyone, and including a user rating system could dissuade many parents from going out and buying bad games for their loved ones. All bad games could use less sales.

Meme Channel

Anyone with a Livejournal, MySpace, and/or Facebook account must know all about memes. While they aren't all the same, the bulk majority of these chain letter-esque forwards involve personal questions where you procrastinate get to learn about yourself and your friends. And for some inexplicable reason, they're popular. I don't know why, but people are interested to know if I've seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, if I've ever swam in an ocean, and how old I was when I first kissed someone.

The Meme Channel would be similar to the Everybody Votes channel, only more personal. You register your Mii with the Channel and send invites to your Wii Address Book friends to join. Once you establish a specific Mii to send questions to, can custom create questions and send them off any or all of your friends and family members through their "Meme Channel account", for lack of a better term – over the net or directly on the same Wii. When you log in, you're presented with all the new questions that have arrived since the last time, and you get to answer them. Questions are presented as multiple choice with two or four answers, or with open-ended responses.

Once you're done, the responses are sent back to the person who sent you the questions, and you are able to see their responses. You can also forward the questions with your responses to other friends. For the multiple-choice questions, you get to see an instant percentage breakdown based on the responses that your friends have made, as opposed to the entire country over a one-week period.

Because the questions are user-created and they aren't screened or altered (though I imagine certain words would be starred out), Nintendo can't be held responsible for their content. You're choosing to connect with friends on your Wii account, and targeting which Mii from that system to send the content to. Most people should be satisfied with that security and flexibility. If you find questions to be inappropriate, you can always toss them and remove people from the receipt list.

Wii Timer

Those Japanese people need timers for everything from rice to tea. Every different variety of tea comes with different steeping times; some need to steep for three minutes, some for five, and others seven. And rice, well it can vary from the 5-minute instant stuff to the kind that needs a good half an hour of cooking before its ready. For everyone else, maybe you want to time an hour for studying, or you only want to play Wii for 90 minutes. Or maybe you want to test and see if your roommate really can down three beers in 48.21 seconds.

The answer to all of life's chronological mysteries lies in a special channel that can coordinate multiple timer and chronograph readings. It would come programmed with the correct cooking and steep times for a variety of common foods and teas. Never again will I under-steep the chamomile or over-steep the green tea. And for those who get excited for certain events, you can let it count down to a specific day: birthdays, Christmas, orthodontist appointments, Halo 3 release date... whatever!

The beauty of this channel is how it would operate. Sure, if you start it up, all the timers will display, and even chime when they expire. But you aren't going to leave this channel open for an hour (especially if you're planning to actually play a game in that time), let alone until your next birthday. When a timer reaches zero, the blue light that lines the Wii disc slot will glow in a specified pattern, whether or not it's in standby mode. After all, the often-dormant blue light is quite noticeable when it springs to life! For events that span more than a day, a message could be left on the Wii message board (even a day beforehand), in case you forget what it is that you counted down to.

Oh and while I'm at it... Nintendo, please tie the Mii birthdays into the Wii Message board. I would love to know when Kinopio's birthday is without checking for it on the N-Philes forum.

Wii Scenery Channel

I touched on this one in a much earlier Revolution: Now article. I suggested that the then-named Revolution could act as a faux fireplace or an aquarium, or even display a simulated sunset over a variety of vistas, from Mount Fuji, to a Hawaiian beach, to a view from a castle window in the Mushroom Kingdom. For a touch of realism for the sunset theme, the view could reflect real-time weather from that location. A thunderstorm in the Caribbean could be mimicked with thunder and lightning on the Wii vista.

Over one year later, I still think this idea is feasible, even more so now that I know about the channel system. This would make the Wii useful in gatherings and settings where it may not be appropriate to break out Wii Sports. To top it off, the Wii Remote could interact with the scene at hand. Pointing at a fish tank could change how the fish swim around, or moving the Remote from side to side with a tropical scene may cause the trees to sway in the wind.

If the Wii has any ability whatsoever to output in HD, this (and the Photo Channel, eh Nintendo?) would be the channel to show that off. A fireplace crackling on a wall-mounted plasma screen at 720p? Yes please!

Wii Ware: Skins

To cap off this Revolution: Now piece, I'll end where I started: improving an existing channel. Specifically, I'll take a look at the Wii Ware section of the Shop Channel. It has been vastly underused. Shopping usually involves spending money. So, offer me something on which I would love to spend my hard earned Wii Points: game skins. Assuming that it's somehow technologically possible to offer in a low-cost way, Nintendo and third parties should offer us the option of purchasing graphical overhauls of their Virtual Console titles.

Super Mario Bros. is a great title over 20 years later, but so many (especially) younger gamers don't get that nostalgic feeling that fills those who played the game back when it was new. Those young whippersnappers may not even feel the need to check out the Virtual Console. One way of tempting them is to change what they're looking at without changing how the game is played. And some of those early NES games could really use a fresh coat of paint.

The Wii Shop Channel can be a lot more than just a place from where to download new channels. Skins can change and possibly even improve Virtual Console games, as well as the Wii interface itself. But compared to a "Zero Mission skin" for the NES Metroid, a Metroid Edition Wii Menu skin should probably be free.

What I've presented to you are a few ideas, both small and large, about what the Wii Channels could do in the future. While some people dream of a News Channel Sports Edition, I think there's much more that can be done with the concept of the Wii Channel system, both as tools to connect people and tools for everyday life. Could these channels one day materialize? Who knows! I'll be happy as long as I get to fill the empty channels on my first page.

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