It seems that yesterday’s update brought with it an unexpected, but extremely welcome feature. According to GoNintendo, the Wii now supports certain keyboards via the USB ports located on the back on the console. Although not all keyboards are compatible, it does hint that Nintendo may release an Official Wii Keyboard in the future.

At the moment, experiments have confirmed that the keyboard only works with the Wii Message Board and Shopping Channel, but not, unfortunately with the Opera browser. This can surely be rectified with an update to the software, which would make surfing the web on the Wii a much more efficient process. This does mean, however, that it’s not so much of a chore to write messages to your friends, and it’s easier to search for games on the Virtual Console.

Going beyond the channels, being able to use a keyboard in games would open the Wii to some different types of titles, and possibly signifies that Nintendo is beginning to take the online aspect to the Wii more seriously. In-game chat is one possibility, especially in light of another hidden benefit of the update, which seems to point to some sort of VoIP communication.

At the moment we can only speculate, and perhaps the keyboard support was not an intentional part of the update. For now it’s nice to know that it’s that little bit easier to send messages from one Wii to another.

Related posts: CVG takes aim at the Wii’s interface | Top 10 ideas for new Nintendo Wii channels | 7 Nintendo Wii resolutions for 2007

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 11:55 am by WiiWii
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