WiiWare gets Europe date, pricing

By Tom Bramwell Published 24 April, 2008

Two new Wii Channels next month.

Nintendo's WiiWare service will launch in Europe on 20th May and games will cost 500 Wii Points and upwards, according to a release issued today.

Nintendo has yet to announce a European launch line-up for the service, which will offer first- and third-party downloadable games, but we can assume it will be drawn from the games shown off in the US recently.

WiiWare has already launched in Japan on 25th March and will go live in the US on 12th May. Games include LostWinds from UK developer Frontier, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King by Square Enix, and Strong Bad's Cool Games for Attractive People by Telltale, based on the Homestar Runner cartoons.

Then, 30th May will see the European launch of a new "Nintendo Channel", which will be used for "keeping everyone up-to-date on all the latest information for past, present and future games on all Nintendo platforms". Er, back off?

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (23) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Eraysor #1 4 years ago

    I really want that Crystal Chronicles game - the idea is genius.

  • brainbird #2 4 years ago

    20th May in Europe? That's unexpectedly early. Great to hear Nintendo's catching up.

  • Royal Fool #3 4 years ago

    So will the Nintendo Channel be similar to what the Japanese have had for a while now?

  • Weezer #4 4 years ago

    Wii needs a better storage system. Mine's rapidly filling up.

  • krudster #5 4 years ago

    Nintendo, I ran out of storage space on my Wii a loooong time ago.

  • InsoFox #6 4 years ago

    I don't see a problem with the storage space. It'd be nice to have more, but I don't play all my games at once, and it doesn't take much effort to back up the stuff I'm not playing onto my SD card, to make room for the stuff I am playing.

    Nintendo Channel sounds alright, it may be a bit advertisey, but being a new Wii owner it's nice to have a button to press to find out what's going on and coming out.

    I just hope we get SBCG4AP.

  • jonsaan #7 4 years ago

    +1 for Krudster.

    I really can't be arsed to get another SD card for my Wii and shoving stuff around is a hassle.

  • tap #8 4 years ago

    So, do we know if this will kill Freeloader?

  • the_dudefather #9 4 years ago

    I want me some strongbad, but can the entire season even fit on the wii?

  • WinterSnowblind #10 4 years ago

    @Eraysor

    You mean, it's a scam? In which case it still isn't genious, Ace Combat already beat them to charging ridiculous sums of money for reskins and stat alterations. I would have expected more from Square though.

    Nice to see it's being released over here so soon though, I was expecting a far longer wait.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #11 4 years ago

    Any official statement on the name of this service? Did Nintendo decide to call it WiiWare here in Europe as well, ditching Wii Software?

  • GamesConnoisseur #12 4 years ago

    Yep to Krudster and others

    HEY NINTENDO, WE NO WANT SHITTY SMALL STORAGE SPACES FOR DLC SO YOU BEST FORGET IT OR GET IT SORTED!!!!

    NEED TRANSLATION OF THIS?!!

  • secombe #13 4 years ago

    So, do we know if this will kill Freeloader?

    My Wii updated itself for Wii Software (as it is known here) a month ago, it even said it would be available in May in the update 'email'. So I imagine the behind-the-scenes stuff is in place already.

  • Killerbee #14 4 years ago

    I've not had any storage space problems yet, but I would be tempted to get rid of the Mii Contest channel (which I never use) to make way for this.

    Looking longer term, surely it's possible for Nintendo to update the firmware so that you can just use a 2GB SD card as a natural, seamless extension of the Wii's internal flash memory? Seems like the easiest solution - SD cards are cheap and 2.5GB should be plenty for all but the most hardcore of users.

  • Muddtallica #15 4 years ago

    Hmm...that's impressively quick, I must say. Is this Nintendo Channel the same one that offers the DS demo downloads? If so, i'm very keen to get hold of that one...

  • gruntboy #16 4 years ago

    @ Der_tolle_Emil - it'll be called WiiWare in Europe too.

  • murphy245 #17 4 years ago

    500 points is good price.

  • ryohazuki1983 #18 4 years ago

    Lostwinds on launch would be great!

  • niacin #19 4 years ago

    Well they could easily have games running off SD cards but they will never do it because it would be really really easy to pirate then. Shove all your games onto an SD card, copy it, give copy to mate, job done.

  • karstux #20 4 years ago

    @niacin - That wouldn't work. The games are encrypted and/or signed with a particular Wii's private key. That means unless you break the encryption - which is very, very hard - there won't be any piracy for WiiWare/VC games.

    I guess it's more technical - maybe they worry about guaranteed transfer speeds or latencys. Could be an adress-space matter too. Or they're lazy.

  • IronCladChicken #21 4 years ago

    I reckon they should offer an update to allow DVD playback (DivX/Xvid playback would be cool too) - I'd be happy to spend a few points at the shop for the extra functionality (could DixX sell this through WiiWare?)

  • Oh-Bollox #22 4 years ago

    500 points and up? So I'm guessing most of them will be going for about 1,000 points then?

  • knocker #23 4 years ago

    @karstux

    Good point. All it would need is for a shortcut to the game on the channel menu - selecting it would result in it being copied to reserved space on the wii internal memory and automatically run.

    It would be a relatively short delay to carry this out and wouldn't take a whole lot technically to achieve and maintains the only running from internal memory rule.