Wii doesn’t get much kudos for its multimedia aspects (mainly because, well, they’re a bit rubbish). However, that could be changing.
Virgin Radio has just announced plans to launch a new radio service for Wii and PS3. You’ll be able to listen to four stations through your console – Virgin Radio itself, plus its classic rawk, Xtreme and Groove spin-offs. You’ll also be able to buy tickets, CDs, music downloads and watch videos.
I’m in two minds about this. On the one hand, it’s interactive and whizzy and an innovative service that’ll bolster Wii’s status as a multimedia device. Which is nice.
Yet on the other, couldn’t you just buy a digital radio and stand it next to your Wii to listen to these stations while you play? Okay, so the interactive aspects wouldn’t be in it (yet – at some point digital radios will be able to handle this stuff), but it does make me wonder whether radio stations are jumping onto the console-as-media-device bandwagon, without stopping to check if gamers really want these services.
Of course, Virgin may well have a stack of market research showing Wii owners want exactly this kind of service, in which case I’ll quickly delete this post and pretend I never wrote it stand corrected.