Wii Internet Browser Impressions

After promises of browsing the Web from the comforts of your living room for months now, Nintendo has finally delivered on that promise. The trial version of the Opera browser has been released for the Wii today for users across the world to download and evaluate until the final version is released next March.

The browser itself is pretty easy to use, you point the Wii remote directly at the screen and use the pointer as a virtual mouse. When you load the browser, you are taken to the start page, where you can then enter a website URL. Text entry is a bit time consuming, and there is no support for a USB keyboard at this time. The navigation buttons are large and easily accessed at the bottom of the screen. There is an option to bookmark your favorite sites so you can return to them later, eliminating the need to type them into the browser over and over again.

The interface is clean and accessible by even the gaming illiterate and it couldn’t get much simpler. Unfortunately, in many ways, it’s too simple. Power users won’t get much use out of it in the long run. You can only view one web page at a time, a far cry from browsers of today which allow you to simultaneously view many web pages at once. Even the Wii’s competitor the Playstation 3 allows for the viewing of multiple websites at once and provides methods of switching between them quickly and efficiently.

The Wii browser has no problems handling graphics heavy sites and loads them pretty quickly. The Wii browser even supports the Macromedia Flash player and has no problems viewing and interacting with the majority of flash content such as games and videos. Not all flash content will work with the Wii browser. Many sites that utilize Flash content coded in more recent Macromedia flash players will not work and will prompt you to upgrade your software, which at this point is impossible.

There are a few bugs in the browser which cause you to arbitrarily jump back to the start page. This is not entirely the fault of the Wii’s browser, much of the time this is due to poor coding. Some sites are unable to be loaded in the Wii browser and constantly refresh themselves before the page has completed loading and then send you back to the start page. Occasionally I have hit the back button to return to a page I was just looking at and found myself back at the starting page. At the end of the day, the glitches, while annoying, won’t significantly impact your enjoyment of the browser.

In the end, the browser does what it promised, allow quick and easy access to the internet from the comforts of your couch. It isn’t exactly the deepest or full featured browser you can get, and won’t replace your PC as your main internet browsing device but for those who just need a way to check their email, news or the latest sports scores, its great. I look forward to the final release next March in which the glitches will (hopefully) be fixed. Until then, if you've got a Wii and you'd like to surf the net on your television screen this is perhaps the easiest way to do it.