Today at an investors meeting in Tokyo Japan, Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima and other representatives announced a couple of big plans for the company’s future. One of them being their first mobile game with developer DeNA titled Miitomo.
“It will be free to play, with attractive add-ons that people can pay for. Other smartphone games will be pay-to-download,” Kimishima stated according to a live blog by The Wall Street Journal.
All stars.. pic.twitter.com/5wlostGmh5
— Takashi Mochizuki (@mochi_wsj) October 29, 2015
Mayumi Negishi of The Wall Street Journal said that it “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.” Negishi also said he is “not clear whether Miitomo should be called a game. It looks more like a communications app with Mii avatars that can be ported to games on Nintendo hardware.”
I’ll have to agree with him on that one, it’ll take some time and more information to me to formulate a stronger opinion on Miitomo.
We also won’t be seeing the game until March 2016 as opposed to this year as initially intended. Kimishima says the reason “is the need for more lead time to fully promote and explain Miitomo. The company is busy promoting other titles in the pipeline right now. It will start promoting Miitomo after the year-end holiday season.”
The other big announcement made at this meeting was the new account system set to replace the late Club Nintendo. It is simply called “My Nintendo” and is set to link their traditional hardware with that of smartphones and even PCs. It wall also use a cloud-based data service to share game data between mobile and console games. I certainly hope this means that my downloadable games will be account-based and not system-based like they currently are. If my Wii U or 3DS breaks, goodbye games!
Hopefully Nintendo reveals more information about My Nintendo and Miitomo before the year ends. Kimishima also stated that at least one more Nintendo Direct is set to come out in 2015.