Ach! There’s no such thing as a free lunch after all. Any wishful dreams that we may have had about surfing the web gratis on Wii have been somewhat dashed thanks to a recent announcement from Opera.

Opera, as you may remember, are Nintendo’s unlikely web browsing partners and an optimised version of their regular desktop browser is to be the Wii’s window on the world wide web. We naively hoped that free browsing functionality might be part of the whole Wii package, but it seems that we were hoping in vain and Opera has announced today that Wii users will be required to pay for their browser from July 2007. No price has been set yet – it surely can’t be very much – but there is a semi-silver lining in that the Opera browser will be free to download and use up until the end of June 07. Enjoy it while you can.

Meanwhile a DS and DS Lite-optimised version of the Opera browser is due to launch in the UK on October 6th. It's just £29.99 plus the untold £££s you'll have to spend on expensive cappuccinos in order to access the numerous wi-fi hotspots dotted up and down the country...