9:45 AM, NYC. President Reggie announced that games will cost $49.99. He announced a new menu system called "Wii Channels." He's talking about Audience Expansion and the DS again. The Wii Channel Menu will change the interface between TV Viewers and the Internet. The user will see a unique menu that will have 12 menus. The Wii Shop channel will be the Virtual Console. Games will cost 500 Wii Points for NES games, 1,000 Wii Points for SNES games, and 1,500 points for N64 games. 30 classic games will be available at launch. You can purchase 2,000 point cards at retail for $20.
Somone is demoing a channel called the Mii Channel where you can create avatars of yourself and your friends, or anyone else. The guy is showing us the character creation menu. Five minutes into this demo, I'm already bored with it and don't get the point. The Mii Channel almost seems like it'd be a virtual sims kind of channel. You can transfer your Mii's to your remote and they can also populate your games with these characters. Ok, now I'm kind of intrigued.
Now the guy is showing us the photo channel, which is a channel that displays your photos on your television. You simply take your SD card out of your digital camera and pop it into the SD slot on your Wii console. We are now watching a slideshow of the Nintendo office. The photo channel also supports video, and there are little puzzle games you can play with.
9:55 AM, President Reggie is back to show us a couple of other channels. There's a weather and news channel. Hey a message board channel. "24 hour information can come to your console even as you sleep." There's an Internet Channel that will be based on the Opera Browser that essentially turns the Wii into a "free" web tv application. President Reggie calls this an "innovation," did he not hear of the failed WebTV experiment that started 10 years ago. Satisfy current players in new ways, reactivate former players, and expand the market, is Nintendo's mantra.
The Wii proposition – Revolutionary play, virtual console, biggest launch library, Wii Channels, Affordable Price. Ok Reggie is stating the obvious saying that "you all are dying to play the games." But before we get that, we have a Q and A. First Question is how much are additional remotes – the Wii remote will be $39.99 and the nunchuck will be $19.99. Zelda for the Game cube will launch December 11, 2006. Reaffirmed that the Internet capabilities will remain free and will ship 4 million units globally.
No details announced regarding DS Connectivity. Metroid Prime 3 will be released in 2007 and not for launch window. Pokmon will be the first multiplayer game for the Wii and will launch in Japan. No American launch mentioned.