Might make it outside North America, after all

While Nintendo of America's Wii U release date reveal featured a substantial section outlining TVii, the app that promises to give intuitive extra functionality to existing TV services, the equivalent European and Japanese Nintendo Direct broadcasts focused almost exclusively on games. The simple reason for this was that TVii was only announced for North America, leaving plenty of potential Wii U owners elsewhere wondering whether they'd have the opportunity to use a similar service.

As a flagship part of Wii U's non-gaming functionality, it seems that Nintendo's aware that a similar service should probably be made available elsewhere. As part of a briefing no doubt designed to appease investors, Satoru Iwata gave a strong indication that an equivalent TVii service may well be on the way to Europe — hopefully including other PAL regions too — and Japan in the future.

We are currently considering offering Nintendo TVii in Japan and Europe by taking into account how people watch television in each region, and I believe I will be able to share more details in the not-so-distant future.

In this sense, many partners, including third-party publishers and non-gaming partners, as exemplified by VOD service providers, are seeing a lot of potential in Wii U, especially because it can also be used freely in the living room even if the TV is in use, and there are many possibilities, such as a shopping service or some other service that uses the internet.

With tough competition from other games systems, as well as a variety of other devices, it seems important for Wii U to offer as many different services as possible. For those of us that simply want to play games, Wii U looks promising, but TV and internet services won't do its chances any harm.

[source computerandvideogames.com]