Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Gamasutra has posted an interesting piece that deals with a topic close to (most of) our hearts: the frequency of Wii Shop releases in North America. Its findings seem to support the popular view that Nintendo has slowed down when it comes to digital releases these last few months; as the above graph demonstrates, only 47 items (ten of which are WiiWare titles) have been placed on the Wii Shop during the first five months of this year. That compares with the 81 items (all Virtual Console releases) that appeared in the last six months of 2007.

Before you get too angrified about this, know Nintendo is not alone in its recent relaxed approach to digital distribution. Gamasutra also profiled Xbox Live Arcade and the PSN Store and discovered similar results -- only whereas Nintendo is padding out its downloadable releases with more WiiWare releases, XBLA is filling more space with Xbox Originals (while lowering the number of XBLA titles), and the PSN Store is carrying more PSP titles (as it reduces the number of PS1 and PS3 games that also appear on the service).

So what's going on? Well, it beats us. As Gamasutra points out, digital releases are ideal for filling an empty spring/summer schedule, so you'd think Nintendo and its rivals would be stocking up on their digital wares at this time of year -- but apparently not! Hit the "Source" link below for more informative and colorful graphs.

Sure, maybe a lot of you don't find the idea itself terribly exciting, but we are definitely pleased to hear that the Wii Shop Channel's new gift feature will be live worldwide in time for the holidays. Now you'll be able to gift friends with awesome old games without having to track them down in physical form -- and without unloading a lot of cash, either. That's a win all around.

It might also be worth noting that Gamefront's headline on the announcement had the "Wii Gift Channel" in English, and since "das Gift" means "poison" in German, Google's autotranslator informed us that the Wii Poison Channel would be a go in December. We're not quite as excited about that one, frankly.

Currently, the Wii barely has chance to make itself comfortable on shop shelves, such is its popularity with consumers. But that's not quite enough for Satoru Iwata and co. -- they want to rule the online roost as well. Problem is, quite a lot of people aren't terribly fussed about checking the weather or catching up on the news on their Wii, and let's not kid ourselves here: as far as online gaming goes, right now the Wii just can't measure up to some of the competition.

Something needs to be done then, something to get more people surfing this series of tubes using Nintendo's waggle box. Enter the firm's latest brainwave, a new Wii Shop feature which allows users to buy gifts for one another, such as a Virtual Console game. The lucky recipient will then receive notice of their present, and can start downloading it instantly from the Wii Shop.

"We think this will be a breakthrough in encouraging customers to spread news of fun games [other than by?] word of mouth," Iwata said of the new feature, which has no release date yet. "We also hope to spur more users to connect their Wiis to the Internet."

Is this the move that gets more people online on their Wiis? Do you envisage yourself using it? Share your thoughts, and we shall listen intently.