While PlayStation 3 naturally has Blu-ray movies tied up, and Xbox 360 will be making waves soon with NetFlix, it would seem that companies such as Fuji Television and Nippon Television have their eyes set on an unlikely suspect to help distribute video in Japan: The Wii.

Seven firms will invest in a Shinjuku-based venture company, SkillUpJapan. This company will build a secure contents distribution system, manage copyrights, and distribute income from the business back to the seven investing parties.

The seven companies investing in the initiative are, in addition to Fuji TV and NTV, Tokyo Broadcasting System, Dentsu. Com, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners, Internet Initiative, and CyberAgent.

Plans call for television content to be distributed following a delay of a few days. The various investment partners will also be working with SkillUp on business models involving advertising and paid content.

The service will kick off with the Wii as early as Spring 2009. SkillUp also plans to expand to other devices, including PCs, portable game machines, and cell phones. In the future, content may be distributed overseas as well.

For the Wii, this is just the latest in a line of media distribution announcements. Most recently, Fuji Soft shared plans for the Everyone's Theater Wii service, set to kick off via the system's WiiWare download service this December. A demo was shown at the Tokyo Game Show. -- Nikkei, via andriasang.com

The specific form of the video service was not detailed in the Nikkei report, but it leaves one to wonder how this whole thing will work. Probably with a Wii Channel, but I'd have thought that something like this might require more memory, or a hard drive or something more. I guess not.

I doubt we'll see anything of the sort on this side of the Pacific, but you never know. Nonetheless, it's interesting enough to know that the Wii can apparently do it.