Wii News Channel Launched

It's a pleasant surprise to walk into the room and find it's illuminated in a soft blue light. At first, I thought someone loved me and decided to send me a Mii or Message (I never get those anymore, you guys suck) but I was wrong. Happy about it though.

Nope, far from any type of demented-looking representation of a perfectly normal-looking person, it was a shiny new message from Nintendo. The news channel is ready!

After a somewhat lengthy update (with an amazingly annoying background sound) the news channel was ready for me to dive into... or a similarly cheesy phrase. First impressions?

Just like the rest of the Wii channels, the interface looks damn sexy and is easy-as to navigate. After booting up the news channel, you'll be given a choice between different sections - National News, Regional News, International News, Sports, Arts/Entertainment, Business, Science/Health, and Technology. After choosing one of these categories, you're swiftly carried off to a screen showing you all the different headlines.

Cool feature, is the use of the globe. Certain articles of news that happen in a certain place will have a picture next to them displaying a satellite view of the area and point to where whatever happened, well, happened. There's also a feature similar to the weather channel where you can freely spin the globe, zoom in, and pick news relative to a specific location. Pretty nifty, really.

There's also a 'Slideshow' feature available. Basically lets you scroll through all the different news bits with the D-pad, displaying the headline on the bottom of the screen and the globe on the top half. Pressing A lets you read the full story.

All in all, really well put together, not that we expected any different. Also, Nintendo have called this the 'Fist Version' of the News Channel, suggesting that there will be further additions to the feature in the future.

Happy news browsing.