From the Wall Street Journal live blog:
Nintendo has introduced its long-awaited and highly anticipated first smartphone app, called Miitomo, but pushed back the release date to the spring of next year. The title is a new franchise for the company– first of five smartphone apps Nintendo plans to release by March 2017. But we’re not sure whether to call Miitomo a game. Users will design their own avatars, or miis, to communicate with other users.
Nintendo is saving its most famous character, Mario the plumber, and others for a later date. Analysts say the company probably didn’t want to risk Mario on an unproven mobile format, but might introduce him later.
Nintendo also said it was creating a new membership service, called “Nintendo Account,” to connect users of its hardware as well as PCs and mobile devices. It said it would use a cloud-based service to transfer data between mobile games and console games.
Sounds like Miitomo is an avatar management app (the Mii is your avatar on the Nintendo Wii, Wii U, 3DS), perhaps with some social aspects. Could also be an avatar bridge between the Wii U and Nintendo’s next gen console, the Nintendo NX. A few more details:
The new smartphone game will be “Miitomo”. It will be free to play, with attractive add-ons that people can pay for, Mr. Kimishima says. Other smartphone games will be pay-to-download, he says.
Looks like Miis go ahead and communicate with other Miis without your knowledge. 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, Mr. Kimishima says.
Interesting privacy aspects to this.
Regardless, Mario won’t make his appearance in this app. Nintendo also teased four follow-ons to Miitomo, built with partner DeNA, all of them games, all shipping by March 2017.
One thing I didn’t get from this live blog was any mention of platform. I can imagine these games being iPhone only, or iPhone, then Android. I can’t imagine them being Android only, though.
Looking forward to the details.