Wii Channels

The Nintendo Channel tracks the usage of other channels as well—with the single exception of Photo Channel, all of them are represented. So, what non-game activities take up the time of the Wii owner?




As it turns out, the various Channels were used by a large number of the responders—though given that these people had to download the Nintendo Channel to respond at all, the sample is most certainly skewed towards channel fans. Yet even among them these freebies show usage patterns that indicate they are, as expected, just distractions. Take the Weather Channel—it came preinstalled on every Wii and has been used by those polled over 9.1 million times, 10.91 times per person on average—so, a vast majority of the estimated total sample, over 834,000 people, have used it.  Each of the people has used it for an average of 41 minutes, or 3.75 minutes a session. Based on these numbers, it’s far less likely that people use the Weather Channel as their go-to weather source. It’s far more likely they use it to spin the globe like a top.




This usage patterns repeats itself in various fashion across all the channels, with the one exception of the Internet Channel. Although it was available for no charge during a protracted giveaway period, these days its price tag has ensured it the lowest user base of the channels–only about 515,000 of those polled have used it. But those who have it use it a lot. At 20,242,848 hours logged the Internet Channel is the fourth-largest time sink out of all products tracked, period. It handily beats such giants as Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario Galaxy, and Guitar Hero III. Those polled used it often—at 19.208.428 times total, only Wii Sports was shown to have been booted up more. But that’s only because everyone has Wii Sports. Internet Channel also boasted an average of 37.26 sessions of use per person, by far the most sessions per person of any title in the list. One can’t help but wonder if these people even have computers. It would be fascinating to see what these people actually use Internet Channel to get. Perhaps watching YouTube on the TV?




Other than that, channel usage falls as expected. The free channels that came preinstalled on the Wii were all used in some capacity by the vast majority of those polled, though never for very long. The free channels that had to be downloaded from the Wii Shop had a more limited installed base of around 650,000 each, still higher than any retail game but not by much for the blockbusters. People spent an average of four hours 38 minuets futzing with Miis in the Mii Channel. And as for Wii Shop, each of the people polled spent an average of two hours 39 minutes perusing it over the last year and a half, which should speak volumes as to the importance of creating a streamlined digital storefront.

NEXT: All the stats