APRIL 7, 2009 • Nintendo Co. Ltd. president Satoru Iwata told the Wall Street Journal that the gamemaker will be launching a downloadable video service in Japan. A major feature Iwata mentioned was downloading video through the Wii and passing it along to the DSi for mobile viewing. If the video service does well in Japan, he said Nintendo will launch it overseas, as well. In other news, in the three days after its April 5 launch in North America and Europe, Nintendo said 300,000 units each had been sold in both markets.
Impact: There have been rumors about Nintendo launching an on-demand video service for the Wii for some time. Surprisingly, Nintendo is already talking about adding this to the DSi. Of course, do not expect this to be major competition with the video services offered for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. There has been no confirmation of a launch date or specific details and it is clear that Japan will be a test bed market well before there is a worldwide rollout. In other words, this announcement was more talk than action.
