It could be a day for big announcements. No, not about that Scottish bloke getting the keys to number 10 but about Nintendo unveiling a brand new Wii Channel – WiiWare.

Think Xbox Live Arcade for Wii but without the half-arsed remakes of arcade games that time and public taste forgot. Instead WiiWare will exchange your hard-earned Wii Points for wholly original gaming content made by bigfish developers such as Ubisoft et al and, crucially, the many smallfry independent developers around the globe. Given the thriving and hugely creative indie scene that exists out there in the wider web the latter could be mightily cool indeed.

According to Nintendo’s smiley (but slightly frightening) head honcho, Reggie Fils-Aime, in an interview with Newsweek, Nintendo will fix an appropriate price for each piece of software but will only monitor quality control and compatibility issues thereafter. We somehow doubt that this will lead to a rash of unfiltered and highly controversial software, though – this is the family-friendly Wii after all. In other words don’t go getting any bright ideas, Rockstar/Take Two!

Anyway, the latest ‘internet reports’ suggest that Nintendo will formally announce the WiiWare Channel later on today and that the first WiiWare titles will start to appear in early 2008. Let’s see if they’re right.