I have to admit, I didn't see this coming so soon.
Not long ago (by which I mean 2 days ago),
an article published on GamesIndustry.biz cited a number of WiiWare developers who were calling for Nintendo to put more into promoting WiiWare to customers. Analysts estimate the proportion of users going online on Wii is just around 20%.
What a coincidence. It was just this evening I saw the new advert.
I was unable to find it on YouTube, as it is a fairly recent advert, but any forum readers in the UK will probably see this soon. Basically, it was an actor explaining how his 'family' uses the Wii online (and this was on Sky 1 by the way, which is the main channel of the biggest UK-based pay TV provider) while a montage of all these activities plays over the narration.
Firstly, he plugs Guitar Hero and Band Hero, whilst describing how he buys and downloads new songs to play. Next, he demonstrates the BBC iPlayer on Wii. Finally, he shows off what WiiWare is on the Wii Shop Channel menu, and surprisingly, he then advertises Bonsai Barber!. At the end of the advert, it displays a link to the Nintendo website. I checked and it's now got
a new video showing everything off in more detail.
Obviously, we're all thinking "Finally" and yeah, this kind of exposure took longer than it should have to begin, but leaving all that to one side for a moment, I have to say this is perfect. This is exactly what WiiWare needs. It'll be a while before we can tell if there is any significant increase in the amount of people connecting to the internet on Wii, but I reckon this could spur a great uptake to it. Bravo, Nintendo UK's marketing team, bravo.