August 11^th, 2005 (2:36pm) - While Nintendo has not yet announced a launch date for the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection online multiplayer game service, the company’s plans to put the service into effect have been set in motion and today we’ve discovered that Nintendo is collection information from fans by offering a downloadable Animal Crossing clock that collects information from your PC’s settings, such as the type of router you use, etc. and sends this information back to Nintendo. Nintendo promises that no personal information is collection.

Here’s the full text of the e-mail sent out to random users:

"We need your help to make Nintendo Wi-Fi a success! We’d like to learn about how our players connect to the internet so that we can create a better user experience for tyou when Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection games such as Animal Crossing launch on the Nintendo DS later this year.

We’d like to test your home networking setup and internet connection. In order to do thi, we would like you to download and install some software on your PC to run this test.

This program will run tests on your home network and internet connection and report the results to Nintendo’s servers. No personally indentifiable information is collected or transmitted to Nintendo by this program.

After the test is complete, the program becomes an Animal Crossing-themed desktop clock"

We’ll keep you posted on further developments regarding the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.