Stephen Totilo has crunched some of the numbers available on the Wii's new Nintendo Channel. Apparently, his analysis is too incisive to fit on one blog. So for MTV's Multiplayer, he offers a sort of appetizer talking about WiiWare titles. He saves the real meat-n'-potatoes for Kotaku.

His findings? Wii Fitters are slacking off, lots of people actually got all the way through Metroid but bailed on Okami, and no one who bought Boom Blox seems to be into it. Totilo's conclusions might be a little suspect, but that's to be expected when Nintendo just dumps raw data in the laps of amateurs like us. There's a reason Michael Pachter sleeps on a bed of hundred dollars bills.

My reservation at this point is that the Nintendo Channel is one of those self-selecting surveys. You have to download the channel, install it, and then upload your usage data to Nintendo's Master Control Server. The average Wii Fit soccer mom or Wii Sports bowling grandpa isn't going to bother doing all that stuff, especially considering the Nintendo Channel is mainly a bunch of commercials, and it's tucked discreetly into the Wii Shopping Channel. In fact, the kind of guy who goes to the trouble to upload his data is going to be exactly the kind of guy who plays a Metroid game all the way to the end.

This could eventually be a useful tool for user recommendations. Wii owners can rate games they've played, commenting on things like whether it's a casual game or best enjoyed in a crowd. The collected data then shows up on the game's opinion page. Since you have to have played the game for at least an hour, you can hear a sigh of relief from all the creators of half-assed attempts to cash in on the Wii's popularity. You're just going to have to keep your opinion to yourself when it comes to stinkers you rented and then quit player after fifteen minutes.