Yahoo still hoping fanboys will jump into its Wii portal
by James Ransom-Wiley 
{ Feb 7th 2007 at 7:15PM }
Unfortunately, "Jump in" was already taken. Yahoo's "Brand Universe" initiative remains slogan-less and intentionally under-promoted, still represented by a single brand portal, Wii, supposedly the first of one hundred.
The Wii portal quietly launched last fall, attracting a reported 1.2 million visitors during the month of November -- when Wii-ziness was at an all-time high. The portal continues to haphazardly pull in a variety of Wii-tagged content mostly originating from Yahoo-branded sources like Flickr and MyWeb, as well as from social bookmarking site del.icio.us. Not surprisingly, all of the featured game content links to Yahoo Games.
After a brief visit, we didn't find much incentive to ever return. Biggest turnoff? No system in place to manage the relevance of the portal's content. Really, one picture of 'Fanboy X' cuddling his Wii is more than enough. Try again, Yahoo.
[Via Gamasutra]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
you know @ Feb 7th 2007 7:45PM
ooooh they just got stiqed...
thank you very much, you owe me $15 for that
hibiscusroto @ Feb 8th 2007 8:09AM
Excellent post. Yahoo should stick to buying other people's ideas.
Scott Krueger @ Feb 7th 2007 9:42PM
I'm still Not Ready to Buy a Wii.
I have the 360 and a PS3, but I owned a GameCube and that did not work out well at All.
The Gamecube started out Strong, but eventually nobody was developing games for it. It sucked...
Plus with the Weak Graphics Capabilities of the Wii I just don't know if I can Jump on another Nintendo Band Wagon.
So I am going to wait and see on the Wii.
Oh darn... I'm Rhyming again...
Vladimir @ Feb 7th 2007 10:38PM
um, I would love to if I could find a fucking Wii anywhere. I know Minnesota has a strong gaming culture, but this is absurd. And none of the stores will tell me when their shipments get in. hmmph!
Cory Rehmsmeyer @ Feb 7th 2007 11:46PM
Umm... Why is this news?
Sam G. @ Feb 8th 2007 12:02AM
As an aside, the presence of Flickr photos on the Wii site sparked a protest from many Flickrites who complained that those images - some with a CC license - were displayed without permission. Or something.
Cuja @ Feb 8th 2007 1:08AM
Anything with a Nintendo following is always going to suffer from inadequacy.
J @ Feb 8th 2007 11:46AM
I think if they would make more multiplayer flash games then people would use the portal more often. Where is the multiplayer online flash poker. Get a full functioning online multiplayer flash poker game and I am sure more people would sign up. I think that is the problem. Sure there are board games but multiplayer is the way to go. Or at least have multiplayer games suited for the opera browser. If they do that then their portal would be alot better. Also there are only a few million US wii owners so it will be some time before the amount of hits to the wii portal increase.
Why is it news???? Because it has to do with the wii and hopefully we will see some more online flash games. Personally I like the idea of flash games although some of the mechanics in alot of these games need to be better defined. Playing flash version of duckhunt kind of sucks because of the mechanics. Also alot of games are not suited for the wii and full screen does not seem like a priority. At least that is how I see it.