A New Opera Interview Sheds More Light On Wii Browser

Aug 20 2006, 3:00am CDT | by Luigi Lugmayr

As long as Nintendo is staying mum about the Wii, everyone's left to turn to other sources to get some new details. Since we know that Opera will be powering the Nintendo Wii browser, they're a good candidate to try to get to spill the beans. A new interview with Opera at Nintendo Life gives us pretty much everything Nintendo has authorized Opera to say, and if nothing else, it's an interesting read.

IGN got an interview with them a few months ago, so this new interview is partly just an echo of the "no comment" drivel from back then, but there are a couple new interesting things of note.For example, when asked about PDF and Flash support, Opera said, "Opera for Wii will support all the same Web standards that are included in Opera 9 for PCs and Macs...This version does include Javascript. Whether plug-ins such as Flash will be supported in Opera on Wii has not yet been announced. Stay tuned!"

The interview also revealed that the Wii browser will have bookmarks, and that it is saved to the Flash ROM on the Wii, meaning you won't have to buy an external card like is necessary for the DS browser.

One final thing worth pointing out is the comments made about the display. "All we can say at this time is that the user interface for Opera on Wii will be customized to better suit a living room environment. For example, fonts will be larger and the user interface will be simplified so that the Web is easier to view and use from a distance while navigating with the Wii remote."

It certainly sounds like Opera's got some neat stuff planned for the Wii, and considering we've heard nothing about something like this for the PS3, it could give Wii an early jump on the early online penetration over the PS3.

Full Interview

Report Published by: Mark Raby