Rumor Confirms Netflix Streaming Coming to Wii

The poor little Wii must have felt left out after Netflix announced Watch Instantly movie streaming would be coming to the PS3. The Wii remains the lone major console to not have authorized Netflix streaming. Of course, the Wii being one of the best-selling consoles in America, you can’t expect it to remain so for long, and that’s exactly what some early rumors are telling us.

Even though the Xbox 360 was supposed to have an exclusive deal to stream movies to Netflix Watch Instantly subscribers, the PS3 will have the ability to do so via an app on a free Blu-ray disc quite soon. The Wii also has an optical drive that could presumably run an app off a similar disc (and we’ve heard rumors as far back as March saying Netflix was coming), so it only makes sense that Netflix would be working on a version for the Wii. The potential customer base is too large to ignore.

And sure enough, rumors are starting to surface claiming Netflix is already testing movie streaming on the Wii, and the final product should be available to the public “very soon.” There are no details on whether Netflix on the Wii will require a separate disc, like the PS3, or if Nintendo will be providing a firmware update to add the functionality.

The man behind the rumor, Dan Rayburn, also says Nintendo planned to bring Netflix to the Wii before the end of the year, which would make sense. The holidays would be a perfect launching time for this service, and that would definitely fit the “very soon” timetable. However, Rayburn also says Nintendo may wait until they release their “next generation Wii HD” early next year. Sounds like the Wii HD rumors are also more plausible.

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