A bunch of major gaming network's received a pleasant surprise today, and that surprise was the Wii.

Even though these guys get their Wii first, don't be too jealous, because they can't do everything that they want to. Nintendo seems to have placed a failsafe in with the Wii console. Just in case somehow gamers got their hands on the Wii early, they would not be able to access any of the online features. It appears that the Nintendo network will only be up and running on launch day, November 19. This will stop any retailers who sell their Wii units early from giving the consumers any advantage over the guys who play the game fair. This means no Virtual Console, News Channel, Weather Channel, Console Messaging, or Opera Web Browser. But yes, you can still play the games.

This is typical of Nintendo who just loves to keep secrets from the public, making the hype build up more and more. They're pretty damn good at marketing, you have to give them that. Interestingly, when the Wii 'Update' disk that updates the Wii's firmware was put into the console, it 'froze' for a couple of minutes, only to say that it could not connect to the network. This would mean, more likely than not, if you do not have access to WiFi internet, then you will not be able to update the system. This would mean that the only update has to do with the internet.

It was previously announced that the Opera web browser would be available to those who buy a Wii before June of 2007. Although the browser is not pre-loaded onto the console when you take it out of the package, you will be able to either get it off the Wii shopping channel, as previously stated, or it may possibly be automatically downloaded from

Labels: Nintendo, Wii