Nintendo To Launch Wii News Channel

Nintendo plans to launch on Saturday a news channel for the Wii video-game console, giving gamers easy access to world events during play breaks.

The news feed would deliver global information from The Associated Press and would be accessed through the Wii remote, the Japanese company said Friday.

The interface shown on a TV attached to the console would show a spinning globe and point to the location of a news event. Stories would be listed under business, sports, arts/entertainment, technology, and science. Stories also can be grouped by region instead of category, and icons would show which stories have been read, which are text-only, and which come with news photos.

Users can change the text size, a helpful feature with low-resolution TVs. The news channel would be updated 24 hours, assuming the user keeps the console's always-on system, called WiiConnect24, running.