Iwata wants Miiverse to be a gamer’s social network

When Nintendo took the wraps off Miiverse before E3 earlier this year we knew Nintendo were up to something different again. Sure the Mii’s are back, but the Miiverse aims to expand their functionality beyond a simple avatar.

The Miiverse which will be a main focus of the Wii U and eventually the 3DS will offer a new way to talk to other Wii U players and interact with your friends. So how’s this going to all work? Satoru Iwata has spoken to Kotaku about it, here’s what he had to say.

[quote]We have reached an era where even a single-player game experience [can] have a social component that is very important. And I think, again, that social component is mandatory. I feel that we need to create—or present—a gaming platform as the place to create that ‘social graph’ for folks who are in gaming circles, I guess. So that’s kind of the reason for creating Miiverse.

When we looked at the timing of how we are going to be implementing it, [we said], ‘Okay, when are the best points when people want to have social interactions and makes them want to reach out and say, “Me too,” “I did that,” “I feel the same way,”?’, I think, on a very human level, that is what will give them a sense of satisfaction.

If you look at gaming services, for example if you look at Xbox Live, one of the more traditionally or generally accepted features of the gaming service is the ability to play with folks at different locations at the same time. On the other hand, you’re not always going to be available at the same time to play with each other.

And of course we’re going to have that service of head-to-head [multiplayer, when you are] on at the same time playing games against each other, but what we really want to do is create a place where folks who are playing by themselves will not feel like they are playing by themselves. They’ll be able to share those experiences and have that empathy that we mentioned earlier.[/quote]

We’re just hoping that Nintendo have the full Miiverse experience ready to go on launch, Nintendo have a habit of holding things back from launch when they’re not ready. We really hope it’s ready.