Nintendo quietly unveils new Wii voting channel

Redmond (WA) - Nintendo has opened up a voting platform that allows users to look at poll results in their area and around the world.

The "Everybody Votes Channel" is added to the Wii console through a system update. Like the trial version of the Internet browser, the only other Wii Ware item currently available, the voting channel is a free download.

The channel offers a handful of miscellaneous poll questions, including separate sections for national and international polls. Users can vote for their favorite answer in the polls, and then make a prediction for what they think will be the most popular decision.

After the defined expiration date/time on the poll, users can come back and see the results, which will apparently be broken up into regional and national numbers.

Users are prompted to register their characters to the new channel, where it will track their polling and prediction history, and analyze the data to show things like how often they predict the most popular answer, the distance from popular opinion, and a measure of how "tuned in" they are.

For example, the first poll question, which expires at midnight Pacific time (3 AM Eastern), asks, "Which is a more romantic Valentine’s gift - Chocolate or roses ?"