Here’s a shocker for you: the Wii’s online services are a poorly designed mess. While the features provided do work as advertised, it’s nowhere near as convenient as competing services. Between a far too small internal memory (and SD cards only help to a certain extent), a clunky layout, and a glut of ’shovelware casual’ titles, the service has trouble appealing to those aware of alternatives.

This is made worse with the oft-discussed ’minimum sales’ point required for publishers to be paid for their titles. Combined with a complete lack of demos on the service, and no recourse if you buy a bad game, WiiWare has its problems. Worse, it’s hard for positive press to get out for some games since review copies for the media aren’t easily distributed. I won’t go into the specifics, but rest assured that it’s incredibly inconvenient for both the publisher and the reviewer, and I’m sure it’s limiting coverage of many games.

Thankfully, the service isn’t doomed. In fact, now that more and more developers are coming to understand the Wii and that you can’t just slap a terrible ’casual game’ out the door and expect mountains of money to roll in, the service’s offerings are improving. Sure, some clunkers are still being released, but top-notch titles are coming out as well. And the Virtual Console is starting to get better games too, so there is plenty to look forward to. I think the most interesting parts are the emulation (Virtual Console) of games not commonly circulated amongst the various ROM sites, such as some arcade titles and CD-based games; combined with solid WiiWare offerings, the service could do even better for itself.