Nintendo’s Miiverse will be directly connected into the Wii U’s system menu and games, allowing users to interact through heavily moderated text and video. However, it will not work with Facebook and Twitter, although it will eventually support 3DS, smartphones and PCs down the road.
“What we have discussed so far… I think it is the other way around, from any devices in the future you will be able to access the Miiverse, from mobile phone or laptop,” said Nintendo of Europe’s Laurent Fischer. “You can check what’s going on and even participate.”
Other devices and consoles already allow access to Facebook and Twitter, though Fischer said Nintendo’s policy is not to offer a service that is already available on multiple devices. “I have three devices permanently doing that already, what is our benefit to do so also ” he said.
“On the Wii U we do have additional reasons for connecting, we talked about things like the video chat system, nothing revolutionary but it’s going to be convenient, it’s going to be easy,” detailed Fischer. “And the Miiverse is the one actually that I believe has a very unique feature which is we put ourselves in the situation of making sure the people you can communicate with they are somehow already in a kind of community. The community will be the Wii U owners, who will have this common interest for video games and our expectation about that is it’s going to be a way to enhance the idea of sharing information on the video game.”
Not unlike other third-party networks built into games, Fischer hopes that Miiverse will grow naturally. “One thing that is very important to us is that somehow you could pick up information from people you trust, maybe on games that you wouldn’t consider naturally. Because Miiverse will show you what are the topics or the games played at the moment within the community. And then you may have one interesting comment that will trigger your curiosity and then maybe you will get more information on that game and then at the end what is important to make sure people have different game play experiences. So considering a game that you wouldn’t consider, it’s like enlarging your scope in terms of gaming, and that’s the key point for us,” he concluded.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz
