| Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
|
|
| What Wii Want #1: Wii Menu Skins |
|
Posted by: Kindrik - 09-03-2007 12:58 AM
- Replies (54)
|
As much as many love Wii and what it brings to the table, we know that at the same time it's far from perfect. Whether it's something to do with the channels, options, menu, games, or more, everyone has something they want to see changed or added to Wii. WiiLoaded's new What Wii Want feature will once a week explore something with Wii that could be improved or added to improve the console and the user's overall experience and enjoyment.
There are easy targets such as Friend Codes and region locking, however those are guaranteed to stick with the console for its entire life span. With What Wii Want we'd prefer to look into something that isn't beyond the realm of possibility and could one day actually materialise on our systems in the form of a firmware update or new peripheral. Besides, if you want to listen to me rant about Friend Codes a quick search of the forum should give you a few results, not to mention this.
This week's offering is a little weak since I know most of you probably jumped right to "hard drive" when you realised what I'd be writting about. Of course, a hard drive addition is on our radar and will be up in weeks to come but there's a reason for holding a few of the more obvious suspects. You'll get more on that soon.
Not only does it look cool, but it would be an easy way for Nintendo to advertise SMG.
Now that we're out of that long winded intro, we can finally get into it. This week's topic is a minor addition I believe would be very easy to implement through a simple firmware update; skins for the Wii Channels Menu. The Wii Menu's current look isn't bad, it's just that it would be nice to have some choice as far as color schemes and themes go.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a skin based upon Zelda, Mario, Metroid, or whatever other game is it you're drooling over. Something like this doesn't seem difficult to me and could be accomplished through a simple firmware update. But how would we get these skins, you ask? Well why not make this part of Wii Ware, and even allow people to put up their own custom designs for others to download?
User made skins would more than likely be free, but knowing Nintendo they'd want to charge something for them to even offer such a service. Somewhere around 200 Wii points would seem reasonable to me. 300 would be a little much for what would really be nothing more than downloading a picture to use as a wallpaper, and a few color tweaks.
User made skins would be an alternative for those who can live without Nintendo characters in their backgrounds.
Now here's something that would be even more appealling to Nintendo (for the money) and to consumers (for the added features). Charging maybe 400 or 500 Wii points for "theme packs". A skin complete with the new background image and color scheme, but also new music and a different cursor.
So a Zelda pack could replace the Wii Menu music with the series' classic theme, while a Mario pack could cycle through short clips of the series' immense soundtrack. As annoying as Navi was in OoT, Twilight Princess showed that fairies could be useful as cursors (and also be completely silent). So bring in a fairy as the cursor for a Zelda pack, a mushroom or star for Mario, the cursor from Corruption for Metroid, and so forth. I think the point's been made.
Now the only question left is would you, the consumer, buy these skins or theme packs? As great as it would be to get these free there's no way Nintendo would pass up an opportunity to make some money (just think about how much you're being over charged for some Virtual Console games, but that's a different story). Would you be willing to pay the prices I've suggested, or would you want to knock them down even more. At the very least, you can't say this wouldn't at the very least be a cool idea.
As great as something like this would be, I'm only giving it a 30% chance of actually coming to fruition. Eventhough it's very possible there's been no mention of anything similar by Nintendo.
|
|
|
|
