Nintendo-Scene

Yesterday Nintendo took their WiiShop Channel offline for approximately 3 hours starting at 3:3o PST. After much speculation The channel came back online along with a new dashboard update NeoGaf has cataloged the major noticeable changes.

Channels:

• Digital Clock added to the Wii Menu right under the channel bar
• Forecast Channel now displays the current condition (cloudy, raining, etc.) directly in the Wii Menu in the Forecast Channel box
• News Channel can now show 2 scrolling headlines at a time in the Wii Menu, 3 when you click on the button (supposedly this requires occasional downloading of the headlines to keep the ticker updated)
• Message Board now has the “Today’s Accomplishments” message as a white message which allows it to stand out from other messages
• Address Book entries can now be shifted around using A+B (supposed to be a launch feature) but only to empty spaces. Not too convenient.
• Calendar in Message Board no longer shows “Today’s Accomplishment” only days as having messages
• Scrolling messages in the Message Board now uses a different sound

Wii Shop Channel Overhauled (Visual aesthetic is the same, changes made to organization and browsing methods mostly)

• New Welcome screen detailing 4 Recommended Titles and the points they cost (gone is the title screen bar that had linkable games). The title bar can be clicked on to bring up a list of 20 recommended games.
• Titles You’ve Downloaded was moved to the main shop menu
• New ways to browse
• Popular Titles (2 pages of 10 and includes launch games so not only based on recent info)
• Newest Additions remains the same
• Search for a title which can use partial names
• Search by Category
• System shows the different systems and how many titles have been released under each
• Publisher showing different publishers and amount of titles released
• Genre (different genres listed and amount of titles under each)

Navigation

• You can navigate the Wii Preferences pages with the + and - buttons.
• Typing messages, you can use the B button to act as a “shift” key, while - can be used to backspace, much like in the Opera browser.

Most Interesting however is that there is now a warning message to console modders that explains if you accept the update it could cause your console to stop working. So far there have been no reports of this update actually causing problems with modded consoles. So it’s unclear if this message means that Version 3.0 is a time-bomb or simply a hollow threat (for all we know they’re just reminding us that they don’t take responsibility for your modifications).

Vooks has a good collection of pictures from the recent update.

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