Nintendo Wii Points – Currency in Nintendo Land

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Nintendo Wii Points – Currency in Nintendo Land

Monday, June 9th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed

It seems like many appliances and technology have a whole set of terminology that can be completely baffling or intuitively simple to understand. Nintendo are no different in this respect to the extent that they have their own currency known as Nintendo Wii points. This article will cover what they are, how you can get them and what they can be used for.

It all starts with the Wii Shop Channel, which is Nintendo terminology for an online store. If your Nintendo Wii console is connected to the internet you can connect and browse through the online store. In the store you can get things that fit into two categories - Wii ware and Virtual Console.

Wii ware include non gaming software that can add new functionality to your console. So you could download the opera browser to your console so that you could browse the world wide web. There are many other types of software that you can download from the shop. Most of these applications are free and some are a nominal price of around 500 to 1000 Wii points.

The virtual console is where you can download games from previous Nintendo gaming systems and play them on your Wii console. You may think this is a pretty lame idea given that the graphics will look dated but some of these games are incredibly addictive and great fun. And some people just like the nostalgia that they can evoke. Again, the pricing for these games is reasonable. At the bottom end a Nintendo Entertainment System game will cost around 500 points whilst at the top end, a Nintendo 64 game will cost about 1000 Wii points.

So the magic question is : what is one Wii point worth ? Well one Wii point equates to one US cent. So a Nintendo Entertainment System game will cost 5 dollars. Yes, I know it seems unnecessarily complicated to create a new currency that is really the US currency by another name (in value terms anyway) but I guess they see the online shop as a global enterprise and want to standardize the way people buy their merchandise throughout the world. Wii points is their way of doing this.

Wii Points can be bought at the Wii shop channel by using a credit card. The lowest denomination is 2000 Wii points (or $20). You can also get Wii points by purchasing a Wii points card from a physical electronics or games store. The card can be used personally or can be given as a gift or present if you don’t know what to get for someone.

The Wii points card can be redeemed by logging into the Wii Shopping channel and typing in the relevant code on the card. The value will be automatically credited to your account and purchases can be made.

As a matter of fact, soon after the launch of the Nintendo Wii, the company launched the Wii Points Card where you could get points for games or other types of software. In Europe, the Star Points system was launched under the same principle.

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