Nintendo’s First Mobile Game Announced
Updated: 10/28/15 @ 11:22pm – Added media and clarification for Miitomi.
I don’t know if I should be shocked or not, but Nintendo has announced that its first mobile device game, which was supposed to launch before the end of this year, has been delayed until March of 2016. The name of the game is Miitomo. It is free to play and features Nintendo’s once-popular Mii characters that users can create. There will be add-ons for the Miis that people can pay for.
Not much is known at about the “game”, but it appears that the Miis can communicate with other Miis without your knowledge. According to the Wall Street Journal, “This will help people who are hesitant to talk about themselves to communicate with others, and reveal a side of your friends you never knew”. In a way, this sort of sounds like a StreetPass Mii Plaza for your phone.
Nintendo describes it as a communication application that allows you to share information with your friends comfortably and securely. You will have fed your own Mii a bunch of information, so it can automatically answer certain questions asked by your friends.
The main character of Miitomo is you. First, you create your own Mii.
The Mii asks you a variety of questions and communicates your answers with your Friends’ Mii.
The people you will be able to communicate with are limited to your friends whom you have registered as Friends. We are designing this communication application to enable Friends to share information comfortably and securely.
In this way, instead of the users proactively sending their own messages, Miitomo has a unique characteristic that can be called “friendly communication starters” as your Mii will automatically dispatch the answers you gave to certain questions to your friends.
These “friendly communication starters” have an advantage that even the people who are less willing to send messages can easily participate. Another unique characteristic of Miitomo is that you may be able to find out unknown aspects about your friends or unexpected commonalities you share with your friend because Miitomo may pick up the topics that you usually do not discuss but would be willing to answer if asked.
What we would like to realize is, through such communication, you will be able to deepen friendly relationships and have more people with whom you can play games.Both My Nintendo and Miitomo will be available in March 2016.
For reference, more than 200 million Mii characters have been created on our platforms, which means that many people around the world understand the appeal of Mii.
Other smartphone games are in the works and some will be pay-to-download. Four more are scheduled to come to mobile devices by the end of March 2017. We will share more information as it develops.
Sources: WSJ Blog and Nintendo
Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.
