Rhapsody and Nintendo team up to put tunes on your Wii U

By Ryan Waniata March 10, 2016

rhapsody partners with nintendo wii u rhap blog

When it comes to their respective spots in game consoles and music streaming, Nintendo’s Wii U and Rhapsody are decidedly B-squad. For Nintendo, it’s Playstation and Xbox that get all the glory, while Rhapsody is continuously overshadowed by Spotify, and now, Apple Music. So it sort of makes sense these two “underdogs” would team up.

Announced today on Rhapsody’s blog, the subscription streamer has landed on Wii U, available via a new app from the Nintendo eShop. Rhapsody subscribers with a Wii U system — not exactly a colossal horde — will be able to stream straight to their system, including the ability to call up playlists and other menu options directly from the Wii U gamepad interface.

To help jumpstart the deal, Wii U owners will be able try out Rhapsody (aka Napster in some regions) with a 30-day free trial.

The new app allows for easy access via the touch screen to call up Rhapsody’s “hundreds of curated radio stations,” and millions of on-demand tracks from the site’s library.

“We know that close to 91 percent of all Americans listen to music more than 24 hours a week,” said Ethan Rudin, Rhapsody International’s chief financial officer. “We’re honored to partner with Nintendo to bring music to Wii U users, and continue Rhapsody’s goal of making it easy for people to listen to the music they love wherever they are.”

Rhapsody has been fighting the good fight against its larger on-demand rivals for some time now, but small though it may be, the service has shown to be a steadfast option in the world of streaming. Rhapsody has grown to a respectable 3 million subscribers at last count, with 50 percent year-over-year growth in 2015. And all of this without Apple’s mighty user base or enticing three-month trial to rely on, which has helped garner Apple Music as many as 11 million subscribers as of February, according to Apple execs.

While Nintendo has definitely been on the decline as of late in comparison to its PS4 and Xbox One rivals, the latest deal is another way for Rhapsody to make its way into the streaming conversation.

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Ryan Waniata is a multi-year veteran of the digital media industry, a lover of all things tech, audio, and TV, and a…

Gaming

Let’s admit that Wii Sports is the best game ever made

A Mii swings a baseball bat in Wii Sports.

What is the greatest video game of all time? In the early 2000s, it was a heated debate between The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII fans. The conversation has widened since, with no real critical consensus to speak of in 2022. Maybe it’s Breath of the Wild. Heck, maybe it’s Elden Ring. Perhaps there’s no answer at all, because trying to pick the “best” game, as if there’s an objective metric for what makes art good, is a flawed exercise.

But in my opinion, all of those answers are wrong and no one can convince me otherwise. The older I’ve gotten and the more video games I’ve played, the more ready I am to die on a very specific hill: Wii Sports is the greatest video game of all time.
The GOAT
Wii Sports was an unlikely success story for Nintendo. Included as a free pack-in game with the Wii in 2006, the sports anthology was less of a game and more of a tech demo. It was a simple way to get new Wii owners comfortable with the idea of motion controls by having them mimic familiar actions. The result was an incredibly fun and intuitive game that everyone and their grandmother could play, quite literally.

Gaming

I paid $2 a day to play an abandoned Wii Sports sequel

wii sports club retrospective boxing

It’s hard to find someone who was alive during the Wii’s heyday that hasn’t at least tried Wii Sports. It’s one of the bestselling games of all time, and its simple but accurate motion controls made everyone from young kids to seniors feel like they were an athlete for a few minutes. Those are big shoes to fill for any game trying to follow it up, and Nintendo Switch Sports is poised to reinvigorate the formula on April 29 with its reworked visuals and new sports offering.
But did you know that another Wii Sports game came out between those two titles? In the early days of the Wii U, Nintendo released Wii Sports Club, a remake of the classic casual sports title for the failed Wii U console. It enhanced the controls and visuals and tried to give the Wii Sports series a lively community.
Nintendo Switch Sports rekindled my memory of Wii Sports Club's existence, and following the announcement of the Wii U eShop's impending closure, I knew I wanted to check it out and see why this follow-up fell into obscurity. This meant paying $2 a day to access a remake of Wii Sports with broken features that almost no one was playing. Was it worth it? No, but it's a very fitting Wii U game as it's also a product completely overshadowed and made redundant by its predecessor.
Wii U - Wii Sports Club All Sports Trailer
Pay to play
I was able to find Wii Sports Club on the Wii U eShop and download it for free. While free-to-play Wii Sports seems like a fantastic idea, it doesn’t last long. The first time I booted up the game, I had a 24-hour free trial to try any of the five sports -- tennis, bowling, golf, baseball, and boxing -- that I wanted. I got a bit of tennis and bowling in on my first day with the game, but didn't see everything it had to offer.
After that first day, it was time to pay up. I was given two payment options in-game that would then bring me the Nintendo eShop. I could purchase the individual sports for $10 each, which would give me access to them and their associated minigames forever. My other option was to pay $2 a day to access everything.
Although having to buy a $2 day pass several days in a row for an abandoned Wii U game wasn't really a wise financial investment, I was curious enough to succumb to this microtransaction and keep playing. Doing that and only spending around $14 makes a lot more sense than paying $50 for remakes of games I got for free with my Wii over 15 years ago. This monetization scheme doesn't seem like it was that good of a deal in 2014, and it definitely isn't one now when there are tons of cheaper or free fitness apps that people can get much more out of. But what exactly did I get for that money?
Reinventing sports
Since June 2014, Wii Sports Club has featured the same five sports as the original Wii pack-in: Tennis, bowling, golf, baseball, and boxing. The individual sports play as you remember them in the original Wii Sports for the most part. Swinging the Wii Remote causes your character to make the same motion with a tennis racket, golf club, bat, ball, or fist. Some training mode minigames do shake the formula for each sport up a bit, but none kept my attention for long.
The most significant gameplay differences between the original Wii Sports and Wii Sports Club are Wii MotionPlus support and the Wii U GamePad. Wii MotionPlus is obviously more responsive than the basic Wii Remotes, so the movement of whatever you’re holding in-game does feel more accurate in Wii Sports Club. That said, the game is still easy and accessible enough that I’d call it a must-try for players who love Wii Sports.
Then there’s the Wii U GamePad, which comes up in golf and baseball. In golf, you place the Wii U GamePad on the ground, and it displays the ball you have to hit. It’s a fun visual touch but very gimmicky. Meanwhile, the GamePad’s gyroscope is used to aim pitches and catch balls in baseball. Although baseball makes much better use of the GamePad, constantly switching between it and the Wii remote can get tiring. Outside of those features, the Wii U GamePad is fairly useless in Wii Sports Club, so it isn’t nearly as good of a tech demo for its system as the original Wii Sports was.

Overall, these five sports are only slightly enhanced versions of what you remember from the original Wii Sports. It’s a remake that’s not wholly necessary, considering one can play the original game on Wii U via backward compatibility. That’s not a good thing when there are over six times more copies of Wii Sports out there than there are Wii U systems. It's a bite-sized version of the conundrum that the Wii U also found itself in.
Gone clubbing
Wii Sports Club is so named because Nintendo focuses on in-game clubs. Each day, players can choose to join a club -- many of which are based on states, regions, or countries. These clubs are then ranked individually for each sport, depending on their players’ performance.
I joined the Illinois club, but this didn't have a noticeable impact on my experience because Wii Sports Club's social functionality doesn't really work anymore. While it still tracks clubs' performances online, there's no good way to communicate.
Playing Wii Sports Club is a lonely experience in 2022.

Gaming

Your Nintendo and PlayStation subscriptions are changing

Playing games via Nintendo Switch Online.

According to a report from Gamesindustry.biz, Sony and Nintendo will be altering their subscription service guidelines. Specifically, the alterations, which have been agreed to independently by both companies, call for changes to how each handles the automatic renewal of subscriptions to online services.

Sony and Nintendo's changes are being spurred on following an investigation into auto-renewal practices by the U.K's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). "As a result of our investigations," said CMA executive director of enforcement, Michael Grenfell, "a number of changes have been made across the sector to protect customers and help tackle concerns about auto-renewing subscriptions."