Gamertell

I received an official list from a Nintendo rep this morning (August 9, 2007) concerning the Wii Firmware ver. 3.0 update. The update took place Monday (August 6, 2007) evening/Tuesday morning (August 7, 2007) and included the following upgrades:

Wii Menu

• The weather forecast will now be displayed on the Forecast Channel icon in the Wii Menu.
• Headline news will now be displayed on the News Channel icon in the Wii Menu.
• The current time will now be displayed in the Wii Menu.
• The area around the Wii Message Board button will now flash when a message arrives.

Wii Message Board

• You’re now able to rearrange the order of your Wii Friends in the address book.
• You’re now able to go into the Wii Friends registration screen by pressing the A Button on a blank spot in the address book.
• Envelope message icons will now appear on the calendar only on the dates when a message is received.
• Your message sending history will now be displayed in Today’s Accomplishments.
• You can now scroll the message text by pressing the B button on the message screen.

Wii Shop Channel

• The search function on Virtual Console has been enhanced.

The list is not quite as precise as I had hoped but at least the observations of gamers posted on other sites were pretty accurate.

Read [Gamertell] Also Read [GameTab] Via [QJ]

UPDATE (08/10/2007): I asked Nintendo if any anti-mod chip elements were part of the update and if there were any more details about the video clips in the Virtual Console. This was their response:

Nintendo is continually working to upgrade its products and combat piracy. A warning gives users the ability to opt out of the upgrade if they wish. Version 3 details can be found in the FAQ at http://wii.nintendo.com/wii_faq_other.jsp#q7.

Video clips of Virtual Console titles are available on Nintendo.com, which can be accessed through the Internet Channel.

The list on that FAQ page pretty much echoes the list above.

One interesting thing to note from that FAQ page is the item just above the firmware update, which implies that some Wii systems may eventually be ale to play music CDs and DVDs:

Q: Can the Wii console playback music CDs and DVDs?
A: The Wii console released in the end of 2006 does not have the feature to playback music CDs or DVDs.