Why Connect 24?
Nintendo first hinted at what would become known as “WiiConnect24” at E3 2005, six months before Nintendo revealed the Wii Remote and a full year before Nintendo showed the first Wii gameplay footage at E3 2006.
At E3 2006 and even past the launch of Wii, Nintendo advertised “WiiConnect24” as one of the key reasons Wii was such a great system. Nintendo promised that Wii Connect 24 would make the Wii a new experience every day, adding new levels, items, missions, system updates, and Wii Channel content even while we slept, so that we would be surprised with a bunch of cool new stuff every time we turned our Wii consoles on.
What the heck happened Nintendo?
Three years into the system's life-span and I'm not aware of any feature or game that uses WiiConnect24 in any significant capacity, and I’ve had my WiiConnect24 activated from the day I brought my system home on launch day back in 2006.
Why do I have to manually install updates to my Wii Channels and Wii Console and wait 5 or more minutes for them to connect and download to my system? Shouldn't the Wii have been doing this before I even turned the system on through WiiConnect24?
Every time I use the News, Forecast, Nintendo, and Everybody Votes channels, I have to wait a minute or more for the Wii to connect to the internet and download new material for them. This should happen automatically before I even turn on the system if Wii Connect 24 is even half as useful as Nintendo says it is, but because I have to wait, I often don’t even bother with these features because using them takes up too much time.
It’s especially annoying when I want to go and browse through the Wii Shop Channel and find that the Wii is DEMANDING that I go and download a new version of the operating system before I can even use the Shop Channel, and this is after I already spent 30 seconds or more just logging in to even attempt to get into the Shop Channel to begin with.
So now I have to go into my Wii System Menu and download the new OS upgrade, which takes about 5 minutes, so by the time it finishes downloading, I don’t even feel like shopping for games anymore, let alone sitting down and playing the games I already have.
On the rare occasion that my Wii’s disk tray starts glowing, which is the signal that Wii Connect 24 has received an update, I’ll turn on my Wii and find that the “update” I got was a message from Nintendo telling me to download a new channel or download a new operating system upgrade.
Shouldn’t Nintendo have just sent me those new features or upgrades automatically to begin with rather than send me a message telling me to do it manually?
Honestly, all I've used WiiConnect24 in the three and a half years I’ve owned a Wii for is sending my Wii blank emails form my computer to make the disk slot glow, which is something I shouldn't have to jump through loops to make happen anyway, it should just be a menu option.
As far as I’m concerned, right now WiiConnect24 is the virtual equivalent to those “mystery ports” on the bottoms of the NES, Super NES, Nintendo 64 and Nintendo Gamecube consoles that promised “exciting opportunities for expansion” only to play host to gimmicky peripherals late in the consoles lifespan, or worse, nothing at all.
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