Starting at 12.01am on Wednesday, November 18, Wii owners in the UK will be able to download the new BBC iPlayer Wii Channel, giving them instant access to recent television and radio programs on demand without having to navigate to the service via the Wii Internet Channel. The upgraded service now features a full-screen interface for a higher-quality experience overall. Nintendo UL general manager David Yarnton talks up the new channel.

“Our partnership with the BBC is another way in which Nintendo is looking to broaden the market for its products by offering compelling and relevant content to families. BBC iPlayer offers Wii owners another reason to turn their console on everyday and adds to the already established non gaming content on Wii that includes Wii Channels for news, weather forecasts and an internet browser.”

Yes, another reason to turn your Wii on every day, along with all of those other perfectly valid reasons, which I am sure will strike me any moment now.

The 50 minute one-off program was part obligatory primer, explaining genre types like platformer, shoot ‘em up and MMORPG, as well as giving ample screen time to retro titillating fare like Beat ‘Em And Eat ‘Em. But Gameswipe offered thoughtful insight into topics like the mainstream coverage of games, bad writing in games, and a brilliant guest editorial from comedian Dara O’Briain.

While the show succeeding in touching on mainstream paranoia about games, in a refreshing, non-self pitying way, it seemed to spend a bit too much time on overly violent fare. The amount of airtime given to games like Manhunt 2, Grand Theft Auto, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and, curiously, the new Wolfenstein seemed an odd choice.

The show hurried past more interesting games like Braid and Portal, ignoring some more important, more innovative entries in certain genres seemingly in favour of giving Wolfenstein more screentime. Mentions of less “important” niche games like Konami’s self-parodying Parodius, the famously Engrish-ized Zero Wing and NEC’s gaseous platformer Kato-chan and Ken-chan were cute, but the glossing over of games like StarCraft, Half-Life and others felt like holes.

But I’m nitpicking. The show was entertaining—far superior to the typical video game coverage on broadcast television—and worth watching, if you can access the BBC’s iPlayer service. Me, I had to watch it on YouTube, which I’d recommend doing so sooner than later.

Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe [BBC]

The program, Watchdog, said it received 155 complaints from viewers regarding the so-called “Yellow Light of Death”, in which the PS3 suffers a fatal hard drive failure. Watchdog then set up a street stunt outside Sony’s UK office, in which they offered to fix consoles suffering from this problem for free. Ten people brought in consoles for repair. Watchdog sent a technical report to Sony based on three of them, one of which had already been subjected to an attempted repair by its owner.

Ray Maguire, the Sony UK managing director, seized on that small sample size in his letter to the BBC.

The testing concerned a sample of only three PS3s, which cannot, on any basis, be deemed to be representative of a UK user base of 2.5 million. One of these had in addition been materially altered by the owner. SCEUK has run searches of its customer complaints/warranty database to identify the number of reports made to it regarding instances of system shutdown or failure in circumstances where the front panel yellow indicator is illuminated. The results show that of all PS3s sold in the UK to date, fewer than one half of one per cent of units have been reported as failing in circumstances where the yellow indicator is illuminated.

Sony also cautioned that allegations its warranted repairs are inadequate come from third-party refurbishers with an interest in profiting from such claims. The one Watchdog sought out fixed a console for £103 (AU$195); Sony’s cost is £128 (AU$242) for a console past its one-year warranty.

Importantly, it is clear that third party repairers will profit from any public concern that is raised about the reliability of the PS3, and have an interest in criticising SCEUK’s after sales service (despite the relatively small price differential in their own service offering). The BBC will therefore doubtless wish to exercise caution before relying on anecdotal evidence, provided by them, concerning the extent or cause of these issues.

Maguire concludes the letter, dated September 11, with a reminder that whatever is broadcast, Sony won’t take it lying down.

I regret to say that neither the correspondence to date, nor the ‘PlayStation Repair Action Team ’stunt, have given me much confidence that you are treating this issue fairly. If the report is broadcast in what appears to be its current form, SCEUK will scrutinise its accuracy and will take all necessary steps to protect its reputation and that of the PS3.

Maguire’s letter is reprinted in its entirety at GamesIndustry.biz.

Sony Tackles BBC Over ‘PS3 Failure’ Report [GamesIndustry.biz]

Bad-ass US Airways pilot Chesley Sullenberger recently completed the first successful water landing of a commercial aircraft in 45 years, touching down on the Hudson River. Now, you can relive the magic, via flight sim.

The BBC’s recent report on the amazing, everybody-unbelievably-survived landing recreated the ditching of the Airbus 320 with the help of the folks at Just Flight, creator of fine flight sim add-ons, and Microsoft Flight Simulator X.

According to GameZine, Just Flight turned around the realistic simulation of the US Airways flight 1549 non-disaster over a weekend, giving us a pilot’s eye view of the action. It’s worth a look, especially for flight sim fanatics and the news-obsessed who can’t get enough of this rare bout of positive news.

A pilot’s eye view of NY crash flight [BBC News via GameZine]

Who wouldn’t want a LittleBigPlanet movie? Bed sheets? Bubble bath? Sackboy lunch boxes all around!

Game on for British developers [BBC via VG247]

So, while I’m impressed that someone has done this, this doesn’t mean that it’s the best possible iPlayer proposition for that console. We’re investigating the optimal video profile and browser proposition to enable us to officially make iPlayer available on PS3 in due course.

They don’t want the iPlayer to run on the PS3 – they want it to run damn well. Patience, young BBC viewing PS3 owner!
BBC iPlayer On PlayStation 3? Not Yet [BBC Internet Blog via CVG]

Since the whole replay service is web-based, it will take some extra effort for Microsoft to get on board, but Waters theorises that Sony adding iPlayer support to its PS3 browser is “almost inevitable”. It doesn’t mean much to those outside of the UK, but we certainly hope that the competition for services like the BBC’s makes the suits hop to.

Wii becomes home of online video [BBC News dot.life - thanks, Ricardo!]

“This exciting alliance with the BBC is yet another way in which Nintendo is looking to broaden the market for its products by offering compelling and relevant content to families,” added David Yarnton, general manager of Nintendo UK.

Right now the iPlayer requires the Wii Internet Channel to function, but the BBC is looking into making it a standalone free feature in the future.

Wii gets BBC iPlayer [GamesIndustry.biz]

The size of the beast suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought.

Crabs! And crabs are a lot bigger than scorpions, so if we had an 8-foot scorpion, that’s one…massive crab. Sorry.

Man-sized sea scorpion claw found [BBC, via The Gaming Fascist] [Image]

It’s a common misconception that gaming is a solitary activity, as today an increasing number of titles are for gamers to get together and play in turn. In this respect, it’s no different to golf — a game which can be a source of marital friction but is rarely accused of incitement to murder… Games like Halo are part of such a large sub-culture that people who don’t play them are likely to be seen as oddballs and excluded from many conversations — in much the same way as people who aren’t interested in football or who don’t have a television.

The piece goes on to cite a university professor who says gamers have more friends than non-gamers and mention evidence that games improve eye-hand coordination. Maybe it’s something in the air, but I get the feeling gaming’s days as the scapegoat for society’s ills are numbered. More of this level headed reporting please!
In Defense of Computer Games [BBC]