Report: Wii may stream movies
Nintendo's Wii may follow Microsoft's Xbox and Sony PS3 into the film market.
On Thursday, entertainment trade publication Variety reported that an executive from film studio Lionsgate said the Wii could be equipped to stream movies as early as this year.
Are movies next?
(Credit: GameSpot)"The thing that is clearly a force in digital are the game devices," Curt Marvis, president of digital media for Lionsgate, told Variety. "I think when we see the Wii come into the market with the ability to stream movies, which I think is maybe going to happen as soon as this year, I think that's going to be a big marketplace for digital distribution."
A Nintendo representative said the company doesn't comment on rumor or speculation.
The major film studios are fans of game consoles. People are used to thinking of the boxes as entertainment devices. The devices are connected to televisions so they own choice living room real estate.
Marvis didn't say that a Wii movie service was a done deal, but Variety noted that he's in a position to know "what's in the works."
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 





Maybe they focus on providing content that is older, and maybe not in HD format to begin with? Maybe distributors would see it as being a way to get more use of that "long tail" concept: make the distribution of content really cheap and it makes it feasible to get more titles out there.
Unless they just built a new "channel" for movies that included its own player. But that's what the Homebrew Channel and GeexBox already do - I can play most media formats on there from a USB flash drive, so it's like a flash-based VCR.
- by Nomad0404 March 26, 2009 10:06 AM PDT
- Ok - at the GDC yesterday the Wii received a software OS update so that it can us SDHC cards, that's upto 32 GB of storage. This means movie downloads now have somewhere to live. So 24hr movie rental rather than streaming becomes a possibility.
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(12 Comments)In addition to this the Wii has a component cable so can output in HD if required, I bet all it would take is update to the OS.
After all the XBox can do 720p.