This is probably not what Iggy Pop was thinking when he wrote “TV Eye,” but Nintendo is launching a service called TVii. Assuming, of course, that it’s pronounced TV Eye and not TV-eeeh (which sounds like you’re having a stroke whilst asking someone to hand you the remote.) Not knowing how to pronounce the product is possibly only one of its shortfalls.
Unless you’ve lived under a tech rock for the last six months, Nintendo previewed the Wii-U at E3 back in June. In mid-September, Nintendo pumped up its offering with TVii. What the gaming company is doing is building on Netflix for the Wii with other streaming media services, such as Amazon Instant, Hulu Plus, YouTube, and other internet and cable-based services, like Comcast and Verizon.
All of this is controllable via the Wii-U controller, the GamePad. Already, critics are decrying the GamePad as an unwieldy game-playing device — at around half the size of an iPad — and poorly utilized in the games available for the Wii-U. Nintendo has a long history of throwing hardware at the wall and seeing what sticks, but this is probably a lot more interesting than past experiments like the Power Glove. As a home entertainment controller, this could be a winner despite it’s single-touch input, which could easily be upgraded down the line.
On the screen of the GamePad, you get suggestions of what to watch, group shows by categories, and a unified search engine. This search engine could possibly one of the first mainstream gateways to multi-provider internet media content that might succeed. While Nintendo has a minority share in the gaming market, this could certainly help propel the company away past turgid gaming territory of a million Mario Brothers franchises and firmly into Apple TV’s territory.
You can watch content on the GamePad that’s separate from the main screen (ideal if you want to sneakily watch Community while the rest of your household hosts a Mario Bava marathon), look up sports scores, stats and replays (for those few who enjoy the Major Conurbation Sportsball), settle arguments with IMDB information, look at episode guides on Wikipedia, or just looking for the next thing to watch. What would also be ideal is if the device came with the ability to watch additional content on the GamePad. With multi-disciplinary events, such as the Olympics, this would be the perfect platform to exploit the all possibilities that (certainly) American TV has failed to produce for its viewers.
However, what it also offers is the ability to tweet to all your friends how you spent the last 15 hours watching Law & Order: SVU on Netflix. Or to tell all of your Facebook friends about how you used up your entire weekend locked in a darkened room having your own ALF marathon.
Which is kind of the point of television, isn’t it? It’s all about sitting in darkened living rooms, in a nice, gentle, suggestible low alpha-state watching Golden Girls and ignoring our families in 30-minute increments between coming home from work until it’s time to sleep. And not have some kid on the other side of the world Wii-message you with, “D00d! Saw yr watchign Game Ov Thrones! Itz teh c00l when Lannister getz totes murdered! I kno that feel, bro!” and ruin the other 30 episodes when you’ve just started watching the first episode on Netflix. (You know, in 2018, when it finally gets released on Netflix.)
What is a major question for TVii is what will Sony bring out for the next generation of PlayStations, especially with the recent cooperation on Google’s (unwieldy) TV system and the introduction of the Vita? Or Microsoft, who kinda, sorta crushed the WiiMote concept with Kinect? Both Sony and Microsoft will want to maintain their dominance in the console field and would probably be more than happy to expand into wider horizons.
The Wii-U will be released November 18 in North America, so expect annoying Mario-based advertising everywhere throughout October. Because that’s all Nintendo can come up with. All Mario. All the time.
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