Wii Adds Recommendation, Usage Statistics

As part of its informational Nintendo Channel released in May, Nintendo has offered a new feature making the recommendation and usage statistics it has collected thus far freely available to users. Part of the Nintendo Channel service -- which contains a variety of Wii and DS preview and interview videos from both first and third parties -- allows users to rank titles they have played for more than an hour based on a number of criteria including whether the title is more hardcore or casual, and whether the title is more fun alone or with friends. With the service now having been run for a month, clicking on a title in the Nintendo Channel database will display, where applicable, the current results of the surveys, along with overall and average usage statistics for the title, and Amazon-recommendation-like links to similar titles. The service shows, for instance that 70 percent of players of Ready At Dawn's recent port of Capcom/Clover's Okami have said the game should appeal more to 'gamers' than anyone, with a similar 69 percent saying the game is more 'hardcore' than 'casual.' Okami has been played across roughly 112,000 total sessions of gamers that allow their usage statistics to be uploaded to the service, with a per player average of 14.5 hours, and six sessions. By contrast, Frontier's recent LostWinds WiiWare title shows 71 percent of players thought the game was more for 'anyone' than 'gamers', with and 78 percent giving it a 'casual' rating. Players have participated in nearly 49,000 sessions with the game, averaging just over three hours total per player -- correlating to its average reported length to complete the title.