Miiverse To Be Its Own Social Network, Won't Link To Facebook or Twitter

Jun 21, 2012 by C.J. Smillie

The concept of “social networking” has become ingrained in the mindset of present-day society to the point that just about everyone knows the term. So when a company decides to make its own social network to provide an alternative to the giants such as Facebook and Twitter, people are going to take notice. That appears to be what Nintendo is trying to do, designing the Wii U‘s Miiverse to act as its own social network.

To establish Miiverse as its own thing, Nintendo will not enable the service to connect to other social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. In an interview with GamesIndustry International, Nintendo of Europe representative Laurent Fischer says that instead of making social networks available through Wii U, Miiverse will be made available through multiple outlets, saying that users will be able to access it through 3DS, smartphones and PCs sometime after the Wii U’s launch.

Fischer explains that while the competition offers familiar networks through their respective game consoles, Nintendo doesn’t want to do that, as they don’t see the point when gamers already already have access through their computers or phones or whatever. Nintendo feels it is better to offer a new service that is specifically targeted towards Wii U owners, building a community around the games people are playing and how they want to discuss them.

“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.”

Fischer states that Miiverse will contain a few of the aspects expected of a social network, such as video chat, but it won’t really innovate new features. That seems to coincide with Satoru Iwata’s thoughts on the Wii U’s online competing with Microsoft and Sony, but still raises the question of whether or not this is the right decision to make on Nintendo’s part. There are a number of problems that arise with making a purely family-friendly social network, namely moderating comments, so perhaps it would be better if Nintendo did at least try to emulate the competition.