 The Wii was initially set to come with a free News Channel and Forecast Channel, as well as a downloadable browser that should at least start out as free. However, that hasn’t stopped Nintendo from releasing more free content. Last month, Nintendo surprised many people by releasing the free Everybody Votes Channel. After having a month to fool around with it, is it cheap entertainment or a way for Nintendo to disguise marketing research?
The Channel
The Channel can be downloaded form the Wii Shop Channel after a software upgrade for fee. Neither is very large, and it only took me about 15 minutes to get the Channel up and running. Once you’re in the channel, you can register up to 6 Miis to vote. (Another product that uses the Miis is a good thing, and a free one is even better.) You will also need internet access to get and vote in polls. The basic premise is simple. There are several questions with 2 options (though there have been reports that there may be questions with more options later). Most are regional (By country), while there are a few world wide questions as well. You can vote with each Mii, and then you can predict what answer will be the most popular answer. Once the time on the question is over (7 days for the regional question, 2-3 weeks for world wide questions), you’ll be able to look at the results, as well as get a regional breakdown of which areas voted for what results most strongly (white for even, light for slight difference, and dark for large difference). You can check each Mii’s results, and get a measure of how tuned in you are to the current opinion, a chart of your views, and your prediction record. You can also send in suggestions for future polls. The Presentation
The graphics are fairly simple but done in a cute style. The options are a bright pink or lime green, when you vote your shirt changes color, and when you predict, you hold a balloon of the color of your prediction. The sound is a fairly hopping synthesized track, and is fairly repetitive, but isn’t very grating, so it’s easy to deal with. Other sound effects are grabbed from the Mii channel, as is the interface of picking up the Miis to vote. The questions are simple, silly and occasionally interesting to see the results of, particularly on a regional map, and they don’t seem like disguised marketing research questions, though I’m sure someone could find value in them. Overall
The channel is a cute little time waster, and is good for a stop in every few days to check results and vote in new polls. It’s not anything that adds much value to the Wii beyond what it already had, but it is entertaining. It’s cute, it’s free, and there’s fun in finding out weather more people think bad breath or smelly socks smell worse. It won’t keep your attention very long in any one sitting though. Bront’s Score: 7 out of 10 (Simply because it's free) Discuss this review in the Forums
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