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Wii Opera Browser is Free Until Next Year 213

Posted by Zonk from the because-web-browsing-on-my-wii-sounds-fun dept.
Wowzer writes "Nintendo is serious about giving casual game console users multi-functionality by offering not just a weather, news, and photo channels, but a free internet browser with the Wii at the November 19th U.S. launch. From the article: 'Opera's full Web browser is available for download from the Wii Shop Channel. Nintendo has stated that they will offer Opera free of charge as a temporary promotion for all [worldwide] Wii users until June 2007.'"
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Wii Opera Browser is Free Until Next Year More

Wii Opera Browser is Free Until Next Year

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  • Wiiiiiiiiii!

    I love Opera, but the fact that they were going to want to charge money for it was a little meh, though I was more than happy to pay for it. The fact that it's free until 2007 seals the deal for me.

  • Web browser? (Score:4, Funny)

    by !ramirez ( 106823 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @02:51PM (#16204267)
    Wouldn't this be a 'Wiib Browser'?

  • Is a free, huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Deadguy2322 ( 761832 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @02:52PM (#16204281)
    Did Mario write the headline?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That would be "Wii Opera is-a Bowser Free Until Next Year"
  • They already announced this for Japan, so I expecit it to happen. I think it's a great thing to do. I have to wonder what the price will be once the "sale" stops. Still, I can see how this may be useful, but I don't think I'd pay for it. People who may have a Wii and no computer though might.
  • or are they implying everyone will have to buy after July? non-free updates?

    I'm getting the Wii but not interested in browsing anyway. the DS browser seemed like a nice idea and was well implemented except for the appalling performance so I didn't bother.

  • at which point... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anubis350 ( 772791 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @02:55PM (#16204359)
    ...someone will have hacked up a free version to use in place of the pay one...
  • The headline is a bad grammar.

  • So... (Score:3, Funny)

    by voice_of_all_reason ( 926702 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @02:59PM (#16204473)
    If someone's already bought it for their PC, they can just let Opera and Nintendo know and they'll get a copy sent straight to their Wii, right? I mean, surely a respectable company with IP will have no problem making you absolutely happy with your purchase once you've paid them money, right?
  • *chuckles* :)
  • I'm guessing the answer is no, but, will the Wii be able to download software from places *other* than the Wii Shop Channel (without creative network management)? The Wii could graduate from "casual gamer" market if it allowed homebrew games and -- here's the relevance -- apps such as, say, FF for Wii (and screw this commercial browser nonsense).

    • Attach rate (Score:2, Interesting)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      The Wii could graduate from "casual gamer" market if it allowed homebrew games and -- here's the relevance -- apps such as, say, FF for Wii (and screw this commercial browser nonsense).

      FF for Wii [wikipedia.org] is planned.

      The problem with a blanket endorsement of homebrew methods is that commercial developers will likely try to pass their games off as homebrew without giving Nintendo a cut. This would kill the attach rate.

      • Er... I hate to break it to you, but by FF, I'm pretty sure the GP ment Firefox, not Final Fantasy.

        I know, we're excited that Squeenix is supporting Nintendo, but that's another story. [slashdot.org]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Firehed ( 942385 )
          Yeah. It's not like the first Final Fantasy games were for the SNES or anything. They didn't even exist prior to the Playstation, the series just started with VII. If only those damned Romans decided to use a W for 5 instead of V, we could have some true irony going on.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
          Sorry, but the abbreviation for Firefox is "Fx" according to the Firefox developers; thanks for playing.
    • I have to wonder why they didn't just port Firefox themselves. It would be much easier, and firefox is much more popular than Opera anyway.

      • Re:Wiizilla? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Yahweh Doesn't Exist ( 906833 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @03:44PM (#16205315)
        >I have to wonder why they didn't just port Firefox themselves. It would be much easier

        no it wouldn't. Opera have shedloads of experience making browers for low-spec devices with restricted interfaces. Firefox has none at all. Nintendo might as well have started entirely from scratch.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kelson ( 129150 ) *
        I have to wonder why they didn't just port Firefox themselves.

        Well, Opera had previously ported the browser to the DS [opera.com] -- something made easier by their long experience developing for embedded devices. Presumably Nintendo liked what they got with that partnership, and decided to expand it.

      • "Easier", huh? Opera is the king in embedded/small form factor devices and porting anything gecko-based to devices like that has proved problematic -- the only platform that Minimo is actually used on is AFAIK Windows Mobile...

        If you have some secret knowledge to support that "easier" part, spit it out.

        • Well, i'm sure if they released some sort of SDK to open source developers they could get the community to do it for free.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by doria13 ( 779114 )
      http://wii.nintendo.com/iwata_asks_vol3_p2.html [nintendo.com]

      "Iwata:
      It's even conceivable that we'll take titles that have been popular on the Shopping Channel and further polish them up to be sold as a packaged software with the MSRP accepted in the existing distribution channels. Talking of potential, we may even be able to create an opportunity for amateur developers where they can release games that they have made, although this will be hard to do in the immediate future. The mechanics of the games industry at th
  • Opera Broswer for you, is a Free, Sayeth Mario
  • Does that mean that once you download it it is yours forever, or is it yours until it becomes non-free? Does it check each time it starts or what? It's not like the Wii has a massive storage area anyway, so I can see that if helpfully decides to "make room" by deleting your browser that you are screwed.

  • Um, Uh, Kid-Friendly (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Linux Ate My Dog! ( 224079 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @04:55PM (#16206631) Homepage Journal
    So Nintendo is going to bundle The Best Tool Humanity Has Ever made To Access Porn on a family games console, for free? Pretty big risk there, dudes. One day mom comes home and finds out the older kids have set the page to scat pron to gross the children out. Unlesss they lock it down, this will be a PR disaster in the US the first time a wailing mom is on the news saying how she trusted Nintendo to create a kid-safe experience, and then it wasn't.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NevarMore ( 248971 )
      Yes! Video game consoles are there to teach our kids about violence not sex, damn liberals trying to make poor Jack Thompson sue for different things at once.
      • Thank you for putting this in perspective! Really, what's with the anti-sex obsession out there in the US? Last time I checked, sex was still necessary to create new life, and often a sign of love etc., whereas violence is just always violence. I really wonder when this hypocrisy started...
    • So um.. If you have the kids and disapprove of their scat porn fetishes, just turn the browser part off. I'm tired of products being crippled because they are also sold to kids. Kids don't even got money. I do. So they should cater to me!!

      Besides, the PR disaster of online porn hasn't sunk the internet or computers yet.

    • You must have downloaded a different version of Opera than I did. My version did not have lots of bookmarks to free pr0n sites or anything else that would make finding it easier than using Google with any other browser.

      • >My version did not have lots of bookmarks to free pr0n sites or anything else that would
        >make finding it easier than using Google with any other browser.

        Opera has a bunch of neat shortcuts to go back and forth in galleries, intelligently guessing what
        the next image is, or so I've heard. I don't use it, since all my lesbian fetish porn is downloaded
        in movie form.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ConfusedSelfHating ( 1000521 )
      This is a good point for the following reason: people trust Nintendo with their children.

      A PC is a complex thing that most adults don't entirely understand. It has spreadsheets, word processing documents, web browsers, viruses, crashes, identity theft, etc. Now no Slashdotter is pants wetting afraid of these things, but a lot of parents are and so they want to monitor their children closely when they use a computer. There is an expectation that computers are dangerous.

      A Wii is supposed to be a fun thing.

  • Consider (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kahrytan ( 913147 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @05:17PM (#16207021)
    Has anyone thought to consider that things like this keep Opera in business? And ultimately keeps Microsoft and Mozilla competitive?

    And How would someone browse the internet with the Wii? Sounds like Nintendo plans to release a Wii Keyboard. If not, they screw themselves over with potential additional profit.

    • Re:Consider (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ilgaz ( 86384 ) on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @05:48PM (#16207475) Homepage
      Opera is in business for devices for ages. They are the standard company for browsing on devices.

      Their "Opera Mini" which is shockingly only 96kb in most advanced version (MIDP 2.0) is some hit on mobile nobody could have imagined. I really hope one day they offer those download numbers at least the ones from mini.opera.com .

      When we speak about devices, phones,consoles,PDAs: Opera is the king. Just look at this page:
      http://www.opera.com/products/devices/gallery/ [opera.com]

      I mean they don't need any kind of favour to stay in business.

      It is Microsoft which is a joke on mobile browsing and thank God, they couldn't even take off on that area.

      I wouldn't be surprised if Sony PS3 Opera ships too.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        I wouldn't be surprised if Sony PS3 Opera ships too.

        The PS3 has a built-in browser already. I don't know what it's based off, but the PSP one is based off NetFront. Netfront is a very good browser, but is mostly aimed at embedded devices perhaps it isn't suitable or powerful enough for what is basically a PC. If so perhaps it will be Opera, or even a rebranded firefox browser.

        And if the PS3 does offer Linux has been claimed, then perhaps you can use a real Firefox if you really want to - and the Linux v

  • Well, the last time I heard of a company releasing a software product free for one year was from a very large well known company and a certain popular software development product. They seemed to have changed their minds within a couple months.
    • Ahem... in the Java world most software development products are free. Eclipse, Netbeans, JDeveloper you name it those are just the big three. But there are costs, the companies see those products as byproducts to gain consulting revenue on other related fields, and so far it works for them. Especially IBM which has gained lots of mindshare over their eclipse stuff.

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