Nintendo Makes the Wii Internet Browser Free
Not so very long ago, Nintendo announced an Internet Browser for the Nintendo Wii. They were already applying the Internet connection that the Wii has in games and it was also used to update the firmware regularly. But the use of a real Internet browser on this console was a new idea. Nintendo decided to charge a Nintendo fan in the European Union 5 euros. However, starting from September 1, the browser is a free download. All Wii-owners who already paid for the browser will be compensated.
Untill now, Nintendo would charge its users 500 Wii points, which would mean exactly 5 euros to download the Wii browser, but since 1 September, the browser is free, this has announced Nintendo. Wii users that have already paid for the by Opera created browser, will get a compensation. That compensation will be a NES-title worth 500 points offered in the Virtual Console. The browser that has been made the Nintendo DSi, that was also created by Opera, was already free from the very beginning. They probably saw that this is just something that you should offer your users for free, because they have already purchased your product.
The Wii browser is being offered to the users through the Wii shopping channel. An earlier version was released on 22 December 2006. Four months later an improved version of the browser was released. Previous owners could download this browser for free, but starting from June 2007, Wii owner that wanted the internet browser, had to pay with some of their Wii points. The browser isn’t really popular so far. From an investigation done by Market Share in January, it was concluded that the Wii browser takes up 0.01 percent of the total browser market. The browser that was released for the console made by Sony; the Playstation 3, had a share that was 4 times as big. That would be 0.04 percent of the entire market. That’s relatively not really much, since there have been sold almost twice as much Wii’s in comparison with the Playstation 3.
An Internet browser on a gaming console? C’mon, no one could have expected that to be really big. If someone wants to browse the Internet, everyone has a computer. And because mouse and keyboard are a lot easier to use for browsing, I don’t expect this market ever to get big. Although the PS3 supports a mouse and keyboard, the computer is just the machine for Internet browsing, not the gaming console.
- By Sander v Maren | Associated Content
- Naiomi Solomon
Related Posts
No related posts.
