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Nintendo Releases Wii Browser For Free, Updates Flash
An anonymous reader writes "Nintendo has released an update for the Wii Internet Channel (a version of the Opera browser). It is now a free download (if you already paid for it, you get a free NES game), and finally supports Flash 9 content after being limited to Flash 7 ever since it was launched in late 2006."
I am (unfortunately) a Flash dev.
The new Internet Channel supports Flash Lite 3, not Flash 9. Flash Lite 3 supports all the ActionScript Virtual Machine 1 (AVM1) content that will run on or before Flash 9. However, it does not support AVM2 content -- that is, content created with ActionScript 3 or Flex. ActionScript 3 was released with Flash 9. I don't know of any Flash 9 content that isn't written using AS3/AVM2 -- if you're trying to be backwards compatible (say, you're a corporation, and every 0.01% penetration counts) you're gonna code in Flash 7 or 8 anyway.
This opens up a bunch of content written with Flash 8, but it still means you're not going to able to use, say, the vast majority of games on Kongregate or YouTube HD. Besides that, the browser has so little memory available to it that any "high end" Flash content is off-limits anyway. This update really doesn't do much for me.
Although the updated Internet Channel identifies itself as a v9 Flash Player, it is actually still incapable of playing what anyone considers 'Flash 9 content' such as applications that use Adobe's Flex framework (or indeed anything that needs ActionScript 3).
It's really 'Flash Lite 3.1' as explained at http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/faq/