• by Shankar Gupta , January 26, 2007

Nintendo Wii owners this weekend will be able to read news feeds from the Associated Press while also playing games on the broadband-enabled console, thanks to a new deal between the companies.

The agreement calls for the AP to provide news and photos to Nintendo Co., which will create the Wii News Channel, slated to go live Saturday. News stories on the channel will carry Associated Press branding; no ads will be displayed.

Jane Seagrave, vice president of new media markets for the Associated Press, said the company hopes the deal will increase the AP's exposure. "It's an interesting application that gets us in front of probably non-traditional customers," she said.

The Wii console interface already includes several content channels, available to users who have a broadband connection. Among them is the Wii Weather Channel, which gives constantly updated local weather information, and even uses that weather information to set the conditions for certain sports titles.

Although AP content won't be incorporated into any Wii games, Seagrave said the companies are in discussions about extending the deal beyond a news channel. "We'd be certainly open to that, and we're currently talking to them about other multimedia applications," she said.

Nintendo also said Thursday that it had shipped 4 million Wii consoles by the end of last year, and sold 3.19 million worldwide.