Dedicated BBC Wii Channel, Looking into Games Development

Nintendo have approved the BBC's plans to provide a dedicated iPlayer Channel for the UK market.

According to confirmed sources from within the BBC, the plan is to release a fully functional channel around Q2 2009, and with the increasing traffic to the iPlayer website there has been even more incentive to getting out a dedicated plugin.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has refused to open up the Live experience for Xbox 360 despite working test models already in place.

The next version of iPlayer is set to launch on April 7th 2009 with HD streaming and downloads capped at 2GB - however, the Wii version will be using more mobile, regular quality streams due to limitations in hardware but improvements are penned in with iPlayer 3.0.

On a side note, the broadcaster is seeking to expand into game development with potential franchises and key brand names. No names of platforms have been announced.

Would you use a dedicated channel to stream across your favourite shows? Do you think this'll pave the way for more 3rd party media content on Wii?