Wii shop channel devs talk about gifting feature

It’s not too late to send out your gifts! With the gifting feature now on-line, you can send your favorite Virtual Console games to your Wii friends. The developers of the Wii shop channel gives us a closer look at their latest offering to Wii users.

Details on the development of the gifting feature after the Jump.

We previously reported on December 10 about the gifting feature of the Wii Shop Channel.
It’s only this year that the developers of the Wii shop channel were able to make the gifting feature which supports the exchange of Virtual Console games between Wii friends. And we owe it to Satoru Osako, Hitoshi Imamoto, and Koji Kawahara, developers of the Wii Shop Channel for making it possible.

For those who have no idea how it goes, the gifting feature allows owners of the the Wii console to purchase games with their Wii points and send them to their friends, who are also registered Wii users.

Imamoto said that “the Wii Shop Channel was intended to support the exchange of Virtual Console games between Wii Friends before the Wii went to market.” While they were trying to make the most out of the Wii Shop Channel with improvements on the design and user-friendliness of the service and changes in the European tax rate, they came about the development of the gifting feature.

“We decided to add the feature in the hopes of showing many of our  Wii users that there are some truly fascinating games for the Virtual Console,” said Osako.

It wasn’t easy for them to put together the feature, as they had to deal with issues such the prevention of duplicating gifts, bugs, and even with the use of the word “decline” to return a gift.

Eventually, they were able to deal with everything regarding the gifting feature. As for the word “decline”, Kawahara explained, “in the end, we settled on “Return” as there was no room for misinterpretation.”

Ultimately, as Mr. Imamoto put it, “We hope Wii users will utilize the Gifting Feature to send games to their friends for all kind of reasons. “

If you want to know more about the gifting feature, as well as their insights into the creation of the gifting feature and the Wii Shop Channel, feel free to check out the source link below.