Do you still want Miis?

Everyone's pretty much said what's worth saying on this subject, and there was a thread about this pretty recently, though it got derailed later on, unfortunately.

But yeah, Miis aren't going anywhere, and rightly so, as they're still by far the most popular and fully standardized avatar system in gaming. The more they can do to expand their use in games - whether appearing in icon form on your save file, as playable characters in games built for Miis exploring more of the Mii world, as playable characters or bonus content or cameo characters (As in Metroid Prime 3's ship dashboard Mii bobblehead or the Japan-only Sorcery Blade WiiWare RPG, which had an entire Mii village in it, or even the Japan-only retail Bomberman version of the WiiWare game, which featured a full story mode in which you were rescuing your Miis as Bomberman), collectibles, and so on - and expand them further into being our personal profile figurehead and general online representation across friend lists, gaming stat cards/sigs, profiles, social virtual worlds like in my Miitropolis thread from a while back, the better.

There's so much that can be done with Miis as a concept to personalize one's gaming experiences and online social presence to make it all your own, and Nintendo hasn't even really fully explored the tip of the icberg, as they say. The only real aesthetic updates, as already mentioned by many were, would probably be simply to update them to be a bit sharper looking to appropriately fit in with the higher-end Wii U visuals - where the lower end appearance still works fine on the 3DS, but would need a bump up on its successor - and more customization features, more varieties of hair, eyes, noses, mouths, and other facial features. And of course, as others have mentioned, clothing and accessories, which would work well as potential unlocks to tie in with whatever achievement system is coming to the Wii U and 3DS. Likewise, rather than charging microtransactions like the competition for avatar clothing, taking a StreetPass Mii Plaza and play coin type approach would be the better way to go - include some online and offline minigames and metagames like those in the StreetPass Mii Plaza to unlock some standard basic clothing with, and bring in a means of earning a simple little meta-currency for the Wii U's play coins, probably going ahead and keeping the game, with a variety of means by which to earn them. Then rather than charging and spending real money on Mii clothing and accessories, you could spend play coins on them instead, in addition to earning them from games, with new updates (Via whatever passive online connection service name they use on there akin to WiiConnect24 and SpotPass - WiiUConnect24, perhaps.) every few weeks to months bringing some more clothing and accessories to purchase to personalize your Mii as much as possible.

It'd be nice to see Nintendo do something with all their numerous other mascots too, if only to add some basic achievements to all 3DS and Wii U 'channels' and apps of sorts to fully encourage exploration and use of these features (As well as to add more content and some more replay value to the AR Games and Face Raiders), to perhaps earn little badges for the little internet mascot on the 3DS (Perhaps by simply connecting to the internet for the first time), 3DS Camera and Sound parakeets, the Wii's help cats (Assuming they're carried over to the Wii U, like the parakeets were from the DSi to the 3DS, as I'd imagine the Wii U will bring even more little mascots like that, considering the huge explosion in their growth on the 3DS), the 3DS's little shopping bag mascot, Mr. AR, Swapnote's Nikki (Perhaps having her show up as part of the population or your personal population in an online virtual Mii world like in my Miitropolis concept), the Face Raiders UFO, and so on.

Considering how Nintendo Network officially launches on the 16th when Theatrhythm comes out in Japan, too, and that we may potentially see first Nintendo Network detailed for the west at the GDC, we could potentially have accounts and logins set up on the new network with some little badge or achievement systems and our Miis on there within the next few months, by the end of winter or perhaps sometime in the spring. I wouldn't be surprised if they set things up for us to watch E3 content and the conference itself through Nintendo Network too, whether through the 3DS or on your web browser - like their past E3 livestream and content page networks - and perhaps doling out little E3 2012 badges to users who watch their conference and otherwise check out the new media, demos, and offerings on their E3 network once the Nintendo Network is fully rolled out and we're all using it. I suspect the next big 3DS firmware update will be bringing Nintendo Network, presumably username connection - though I don't expect we'll lose friend codes on our Nintendo portables entirely until the 3DS's successor launches many years off - and more. As it stands, there is already a username and login system on the only Nintendo Network website in Japan, for their 3D Photo Contests. Through that, you can see what photos people have uploaded for the latest contests and view simple profile pages displaying their uploaded photos. Presumably, the aesthetic layout used for that can be taken as a preview of what our official Nintendo Network webpage, profile pages, and user login will be like when all these things launch in the coming months. From what I've seen firsthand, they're simple, but nice.

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic, and I've been fairly redundant after all the good things others have said here. Miis good, enough said.