Nintendo ups the online ante

Over the last few days, we saw the launch of not one, but two new online services for Nintendo Wii owners in North America. Yesterday marked the debut of Wiiware. For a relatively meagre fee ($5-15$), users can download small, exclusive games on the Wii. Last week, Nintendo launched the Nintendo channel, which allows you to watch preview trailers of upcoming video games as well as download try-out software demos for the Nintendo DS, its multimillion-selling portable console.

So how do these services fare in the overall scheme of

things? They're a pretty big step up for Nintendo, but still behind what Microsoft and Sony have been offering over on the XBOX360 and Playstation 3.

The Nintendo channel is more at fault than Wiiware. Though the guiding principles behind the idea are interesting, its execution so far leaves much to be desired. The problem is two-fold. Firstly, I don't really care for videos of upcoming video games. Know why? Because I can watch that stuff on my PC.

Perhaps one could argue I’m not the target demographic for this. Parents who are looking to see if there are any good games coming up right around the time of Timmy or Tina's birthday or for the holidays and who don't necessarily have the time to go googling may find this feature quite helpful. But then if that's the case, where are the free Wii downloadable software demos? With DS-only try-out games, what Nintendo is telling people who only own the Wii is this. "Thank you for spending extravagant amounts of money on our hardware, its controllers and games everyone. We will reward you by letting you try free demos of upcoming games….but that's only if you spend $150 more on a DS."

And as for people who do already own both consoles, the prospect is only slightly more exciting. I went through the list of demos last night and was disappointed to find out that they're for games already out. Half the fun of trying free demos is when they're for games that aren't due for release for at least another month or so. Just ask those lucky bastards trying out the Metal Gear Solid online demo for Playstation 3 right now (giving them a sneak peek at one of the PS3's major summer releases), or the myriad other free demos on the XBOX 360.

Meanwhile, Wiiware is achieving its purpose a little better. The service launched with a respectable total of six games yesterday, with quite a bit of variety between them, including a role-playing game/strategy game hybrid in the usually critically lauded Final Fantasy series, a fantasy adventure called LostWinds, as well as a series of casual, multiplayer-friendly experiences like a trivia quiz game called TV Show King.

However, Nintendo is behind Sony and Microsoft here too, which have been boasting such bite-size, cheap games for at least the last year. In fairness though, Nintendo's downloadable library of previously released titles from the yesteryears of video game consoles trumps any equivalent program on the other two consoles. Also, the big N has been boasting for a while now that over a 100 developers have signed up to deliver Wiiware games. So depending on how quickly all these titles materialize, perhaps Nintendo won't be playing catch-up for that long.