Yesterday, the big Wii news out of Japan was that Nintendo had trademarked a bunch of names for possible additions to its Wii Room channel, which lets users gather around a virtual living room and stream cartoons and other corporate sponsored programs for their communal viewing pleasure. There have also been some murmurings over the past couple days about a possible Netflix/Wii partnership, but still no real progress to report on that front.

Well it might not be Netflix, but it seems that Nintendo has finally taken a major step forward in the streaming media department. As Gizmodo reports, Nintendo has partnered with Sonic's Roxio CinemaNow, the video download service that currently offers around 14,000 titles (movies, shorts, TV shows, music videos) for purchase and/or rent. The service will let users in Japan (no word yet on when/if the service will be available outside of Japan anytime soon) watch streaming movies on their little white dream boxes through the Everyone's Theater Wii ("Minna no Theater Wii").

Right now, the only movies available through the service are from Paramount Pictures, but the companies say that the catalogue will obviously expand in the future. So it looks like Microsoft and Sony can continue dominating the gaming-console-as-a-media-hub market, at least stateside, for a little while longer. Or until Nintendo releases its HD Wii.

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