Online shopping comes to Wii in Japan November 1

Nintendo's Wii no Ma Channel currently provides videos to Wii users in Japan. During an investors presentation, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata introduced plans to add an online shopping component to the service. On November 1, three department store companies and Nintendo will launch the new Wii no Ma Shopping portal, which will carry goods from those department stores in addition to exclusive items like stickers and stamps with Mii images on them. "In addition to exclusive commodities only available at Wii-no-Ma," Iwata said, "there will always be more than 10,000 items to choose from, including foods, daily commodities, fashion items and furniture."

Iwata has high hopes for the shopping service: "Wii is a game console which can be enjoyed by any member of a family regardless of age, gender and gaming experiences, and by deploying services that are unique to Wii with such characteristics, we are trying to make it even more useful for facilitating communication between people," he said. "If we can maintain the high active-use ratio of Wii through that process, people will keep using Wii as a game console. Overall, we are also hopeful that we will be able to increase the social acceptance of video games, which is one of our long-term goals."

Don't expect to buy stuff through your Wii: the Wii no Ma Channel remains unavailable outside of Japan.