Perrin tells CNN all about Wii

CNN's The Digital Life has recently spoken to Nintendo of America VP, Perrin Kaplan, in a new interview, in which she discussed the Wii console and new announcements, including the Channel Menu.

When asked whether the inclusion of multimedia functions is a realisation by Nintendo that these sort of features are relevant in the 21st century, Kaplan said otherwise. "It resulted more from, it takes someone from, lets say who is 50, and they don't know how to play games and they haven't played games."

"Those who play games are obviously, you know, will purchase it to first play games. That [other] person may say: 'Well I'm going to organise my photos and I'm going to learn how to email and send photos to relatives and do other things with it, you know, put music to it. I'm going to do some caricatures and I'm going to learn how to put those in a game. And you know what? I've never gamed but this tennis game looks really kind of interesting and easy and I'm going to give that a shot. And while I'm sitting in the living room, I'm going to check on the news and see what's going on with that.' So the point, I guess, is that we have a lot of different attributes that will be offered and what we're calling the 'Channel Menu'...Lots of things to pick from that ultimately we hope will lead them into experiencing gaming..."

Kaplan was also questioned on the threat from the competition, but provided a relaxed response. "People are very excited about [Wii] and appreciating its innovation and its unique and different approach. Those people who are very, very avid about gaming are probably going to own all the systems, those who only have X amount of money will probably own [systems from] Sony or Microsoft and then buy the Wii system from Nintendo. Those who don't have much and really love gaming - they're going to buy Wii, all of them," she explained.