Nintendo’s online world is the Mii Universe and it starts on Wii U

Nintendo’s Pre E3 Nintendo Direct episode is now over and it’s time to sort through all the news. The biggest news from the episode was definitely the revealing of the Mii Universe  or ‘MiiVerse’ for the Wii U. Think of it as not only the operating system menu for the Wii U but also a social network behind the Wii U, 3DS and future Nintendo systems.

Knonw in development as “Mii Wara Wara”, the MiiVerse will be a hub for the social things happening on the Wii U, and it’ll be the first thing you see when you boot the Wii U console. The Wii U GamePad will have a “traditional” menu on the screen for selecting games in the mean time.

The MiiVerse itself will show off your own Mii, your friend’s Miis, other local Miis on the machine, as well as those from your region and/or who speak your language. Similiar to the Mii Plaza, they all roam your screen while huddling around game icons to signify which games they’re playing. Even games you might not even own.

But what if you’re playing a game? You’re able to bring this MiiVerse up at any point as well. This is also good because you can chat with not only text to friends, but also with messages (like Nintendo Letterbox on the Nintendo 3DS) as well as video calls with all your friends too. It’s this ‘Social Window’ that links player to player, living room to living room.

Alongside the main screen we described above, there’s also going to be an “Activity Feed” similar to Facebook or Twitter. On this feed, players can share messages with other players relating to certain games while also attaching certain emotions (Ie. Angry, Annoyed, Happy, Sad) to let other players know how they’re going with their games. You can also post on the MiiVerse directly from your Wii U, capturing screenshots and other customisable in-game data. We’ve yet to be told or work out what this other, non-screenshot data is, but we hope that Nintendo will add the functionality to the 3DS as well at some point!

But this new ‘social network’ isn’t limited to the Wii U GamePad, Iwata also showed off the MiiVerse being used on a smart phone and while it won’t be available at launch, the MiiVerse is browser based so it can be viewed from smart phones, tablets, desktops and the Nintendo 3DS.

Iwata closed the Wii U edition of Nintendo Direct with some more ‘concepts’. He says that the Wii U will change relationships in the house and outside. The Wii U GamePad will solve many problems people have had with gaming in the past and that the Wii U enables the sharing of more smiles, laughs and empathy.

It also appears there might be a new tag line for the Wii U, with Iwata calling the Wii ‘together’. The Wii U is ‘together better’.

Sounds good to us. What do you think of MiiVerse and the new online network from Nintendo?