It all started with an announcement on 9th April that the two companies had been courting for a while and that now was the right time to spread their good news to the public: the immediate integration of BBC’s iPlayer into Nintendo’s Opera powered internet channel on the Wii.
As FunkyGuy on FashionFunky comments, when considering “two explosively popular things coming together and you wont find a better fit then [sic] the Nintendo Wii and the BBC iPlayer.” Initially only streaming content is available, and restricted to the UK where license fees are dutifully paid, but an independent download service operating from the main Wii menu has been mooted for the future.
Now, with comments surfacing that the Beeb were also in talks with Sony and Microsoft, it looks like the willingness of Nintendo to allow the original iPlayer branding to remain won out over the other two gaming giants in securing this deal. As GameGrep remarks this “makes a mockery of what they (Playstation 3 and Xbox 360) stand for” with the Nintendo machine being the first to offer itself up as a true multimedia device. It is safe to say that in the future the iPlayer will no doubt feature on the PS3 as it has a built in internet browser, a feature noticeably hindering the Xbox’s options at the moment.
UPDATE: The BBC iPlayer is now (unofficially) available through Playstation 3, using a portal with some clever trickery. This “unofficial website…set up by a very talented coder” as Garuti on Console Informer states, allows the iPlayer to be used much like it is on the Wii, demonstrating the ease with which it could be made available to PS3 users if Sony and the BBC can agree on the terms.
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