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Nintendo TVii Service Will Go Dark August 11th
Kotaku reports that Nintendo has announced it will shutter its Wii U TVii in just a few weeks; after August 11th, the service will be no more. The description that Kotaku offers gives some idea of why: Nintendo TVii promised to turn television watching into a robust social experience, tracking users' favorite shows, making suggestions based on familial preferences, integrating with all of the major streaming video services, programming DVR recordings and acting as a second screen experience on the Wii U game pad. It sounded pretty amazing.
It wasn’t really. It was awkward and fumbling and a year later the Xbox One came along with its HDMI pass-through and voice-controlled TV watching and made Nintendo TVii look silly."
Chickens killed him?
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Most people, even those with some inkling of concern with privacy, really don't give a shit if a company knows what shows they like. All it means is they might get ads that might interest them instead of ads that are totally irrelevant.
TV preferences aren't medical records or bank statements or Ashley Madison accounts.
Sadly, that's not how you lose users. At all. If anything it is how you gain them.
Play Steam games? XBone? PS4? Every game you play, for how long, etc is tracked.
Have a smart phone? Your travels are tracked. Your contacts are tracked.
Use Facebook? Your friends network is tracked.
Use gmail? What you say to your friends is tracked.
People have demonstrated conclusively over years and years now that they do NOT care about being tracked. All the above things are wildly popular. If this thing failed, it wasn't because of that, it was because it didn't hold up in some other way that people wanted it to.
You gamers are dead to them. They said so.
It's Nintendo. Post your friend code in the comment section below and they'll send you a link in the mail.
Yeah, there are other reasons it's not really the issue though.
I'm going to come out and admit that I like the Wii U, I have all last gen and current gen consoles, and it's one of my favourites. It's not got the power of my PS4 or my X1, and sure it's been screwed on 3rd party game support leaving it few titles.
But it does have some quality titles, at the end of the day Nintendo has still put out more high quality 1st party titles that deserve game ratings in the 90%+ range than Nintendo and Sony have managed to acquire even with heavier 3rd party support.
Though it doesn't really matter, because Nintendo games are DIFFERENT. I don't play Wii U because I want to gun some bitches down, I don't play Wii U because I want to rip someone's heart out, I don't play Wii U because I want to pretend I'm a wizard battling vile demons in dark dungeons full of dismembered corpses. I play Wii U because sometimes pratting about bouncing around the screen or doing puzzles with colours flying at me left and right is actually also fun, and the Wii U does that like no other. So I'm not saying I think the Wii U is the greatest thing ever, it's not. What I am saying is that it's a fantastic complimentary console to the X1, the PS4, or a PC - it has it's place alongside the big hitters in providing a type of fun that the others just do not offer.
But despite my love for the Wii U in spite of it's failings, I didn't even know this TVii service existed. I've never heard of it or seen it, or if I have then it was so irrelevant that I've forgotten about it.
I'd say that if this failed, it failed because most people didn't even notice it. Certainly I never did and I suspect I've put as much time into my Wii U as your average owner, if not more. Tracking would be the least of my concerns if I never even really noticed it was there, or what it did to even use it so it could track me in the first place.
I'd say this is a failing based more on the fact it's a service few people even realise exists, on a console which hasn't sold well. Combine those together and you'll end up with a userbase so small that it's just not worth the cost of supporting. I'm not surprised therefore that the first I hear of this is that it's shutting down, and as a Wii U user, I don't really care either.