Nintendo Wii "Everybody Votes Channel" Has Big Potential

Millions of advertising dollars and the desperate pleas of public figures struggle to get young voters to turn out for Election Day.  It's getting better; in 2004, a Harvard study found that, at the very least, 54% of people aged 18-29 were thinking about the current election campaign.  That was more than double the interest invested in the race to the White House four years prior, showing there's certainly been some progress.  Nintendo is willing to bet young voters will be far more interested in laying down their gaming opinions online, via the company's recently launched "Everybody Votes Channel."

It's actually a brilliant idea.  The channel offers users the ability to cast their answers to a variety of different queries, with the option to even compare these responses with friends, family, and other local or international online users.  Like most online updates, the questions will be revamped once a week.

Unfortunately, for now the questions are fairly basic, and not particularly insightful.  The process, which uses the Mii avatar, has been asking multiple choice queries featuring just two possible responses.  What's worse, the selections have been limited to dogs vs. cats, hard boiled vs. fried eggs, and eating vs. sleeping.  I'll take cats, fried, and eating. 

We're hoping future questions begin to ask users what types of games they'd like to see released for the Wii, be it full-production or just classic Virtual Console titles.  Keeping the average gamer involved in the development process, even if it's just basic brainstorming, is a great idea the competition should take note of.

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3 comments
Posted by Shawn on February 15,2007 at 6:44 PM
They won't do anything with it beside stupid pointless questions. Anything serious or might upset 1 person they won't do. It has potential but thats all. They will never use it.
Posted by Sam on February 15,2007 at 3:12 PM
i think that will be sweet! it will excite more people and polls always spark good conversations on forums!!!
Posted by xntrk on February 15,2007 at 11:11 AM
Good way to get user feedback without the mailing in a survey through the post office (I HATE SURVEYS), emailing Nintendo at a specific address, or going on the website to fill out something you'd probably wouldn't care about.  At least this way, the convenience is there. Whether or not Nintendo users take advantage is a diff story.  If they did provide surveys regarding games, periphs and other related Wii stuff, plus the addition of a raffle for entries, that would promote a lot more response from their gamers.