Wii voting channel launches
We load it up and mess about.
Red or green? Monkeys or sharks? Age old questions that might now be put to bed thanks to a new Wii channel that sprang up overnight - the Everybody Votes Channel.
As the name suggests, it's all about voting. First you say where you're from, and then you can select up to six Miis to vote. Questions posed are different depending on the country - English samples included one about how you preferred your eggs - with three promised per week. There are also worldwide polls.
Selecting the poll takes you through to a voting screen where you use the tweezers approach (A and B buttons) to pick up and drop your Mii on the answer you prefer (boiled, obviously). You also get to predict how you think the poll will end.
Once you've done that, your data is sent off to wherever Nintendo keeps all this nonsense, and you're informed that you'll receive word - presumably through the Wii's built-in notification system - as to the results.
The main menu also allows you to keep an eye on your voting and prediction record (it'll remember up to 12 responses), and to see how your opinion lines up with the rest of the world's.
There's a facility to submit a question, too. Doing so advises you that Nintendo will then have the right to use it outside the Everybody Votes Channel, but Nintendo are nice people so we're sure they won't take your idea and sell it to rabbits or anything.
At that stage you're told your question will be considered, which raises its own question: who does the considering? And, for that matter, how often do they gather to do so? Are they a group of hooded elders camped in a smoky basement leafing through piles of paper and stamping them with Iwata's bloody approval? Or is it just Dave in admin?
Whatever the answer, the Everybody Votes Channel is free to download (just do a System Update), and has typically excellent music, which we're listening to in the background now. So hurrah for that.
Look out for more Wii downloads this Friday, when Europe gets its usual burst of Virtual Console additions. For more on other Wii channels, check out our coverage of the News, Weather and Internet variations, which are also free.