Ponkotsu

Here we go! Nintendo Land, launching with the Wii U, looks to have many of the additional features discussed here. No sign of a specific home to fill and live in yet, but we're all virtually congregating through Miiverse now, and have our first big virtual Mii world to roam in with Nintendo Land, our very own carnival/theme park online.

More to discuss, but hey, we just saw something like this in the pre-E3 Nintendo Direct in Mii Wara Wara/Miiverse for the 3DS and Wii U! Not quite perhaps a Playstation Home killer yet in not having seen personal spaces to customize yet, but it easily outdoes the likes of the Vita's Near, and gives us very much this kind of virtual life Mii Plaza space in which to communicate with our friends, family, and the wider gaming community through our tastes. A fantastic gaming social network platform.

Beautiful.

Whoops, just popping in to drop this off.

Wii no Ma officially closed at the end of April in Japan, and with only the 3DS Tomodachi Collection sequel - revealed with only a short teaser trailer at E3 last year - on the horizon for social Mii/virtual Mii world content (And this one at least having more of a shot at coming west than the original on the DS did), it'll be interesting to see what else Nintendo has on the horizon.

Iwata has stated that in their continued focus on building up new online features and content for the Nintendo Network launch later this year, they've taken note of what a huge hit Swapnote/Letter Box has been, and they're planning on looking into more ways to encourage and reward online social interaction like that. Some kind of new Mii-based content - whether an online-oriented answer to the StreetPass Mii Plaza, something social like Miitropolis, or something else entirely different and surprising - should be in order and coming yet this year. The latest 4.0+ 3DS firmware update was relatively sparse beyond the patches and folders, especially in comparison to the boatload of content we got back in the 3.0+ firmware update back in December. I suspect there are going to be big things coming in firmware update 5.0+, and we may finally see Nintendo Network more fully unveiled with new future features for the 3DS and Wii U at E3 in just over a month now, and we could potentially see the next firmware update around then.

Considering that they seem to be holding back a lot of new content for the huge Nintendo Network launch update, I don't expect they're going to try to make 3DS owners wait nearly an entire year - from last December to this November - before they release the next major firmware update to finally roll out Nintendo Network when they can get that going more aggressively on the 3DS starting this summer and perhaps let us link with usernames and profiles for ease of having something to connect to immediately after setting up one's internet connection on the Wii U upon first starting the system up, just as with the 3DS when you first boot that up. There's a lot of big things ahead, and the past two investors meetings have only hinted further at how ambitious Nintendo's going.

Anyway, rambling again. E3's not far off, and we'll have even more to discuss soon. Even more walls of text, speculation, and brainstorming.

And this thread's coming up on a year old this summer. I feel old, haha.

They say that brevity is the wit of the soul. Unfortunately, I took a shovel to my soul somewhere along the way. So long, wit!

Been a while since I last added any more thoughts here, and there'll be more soon - been jotting down some additional ideas in recent months.

Anyway, the point of bumping this again is to note that Wii no Ma is back in the news again. Specifically, the service is being discontinued as of the end of April. Makes sense, given that the Wii is winding down, with the Wii U only months off, and the 3DS has taken off in a huge way globally. Makes one wonder what kind of successor services we may see planned in the future on these new platforms now.

Nintendo Video's a global hit, Japan has additional streaming services, and the west has Netflix and Hulu Plus. Given that we know Hulu Plus will be coming to the 3DS soon too, and both Netflix and Hulu Plus are easy locks for the Wii U - the former's already been officially confirmed, as I recall - one has to wonder if we'll see perhaps something smaller like Nintendo Video on the Wii U, or if they'll go all out with the virtual environment for a new Wii no Ma on the Wii U in Japan. It does seem reasonable to say it makes sense to go for simpler, moer straight to the point menu-based video streaming with some nice chilled-out music like Nintendo Video, though, and to separate the virtual world/life elements and put those into something more social and better suited to that sort of thing in the first place. Whether this could be taken as a sign of the potential for something like Miitropolis, though, is hard to say. They could be pouring this sort of thinking further into Tomodachi Collection 3DS, which may at least have a shot at coming west where the original did not.

That said, they've been very coy about revealing planned features and services for the upcoming Nintendo Network, which has partially launched in Japan as of last Thursday. Some sorts of additional online Mii social features - even if not as conceptually ambitious as Wii no Ma - seem like a natural idea, especially seeing as they've even begun creating Mii mascot characters (As in the case of Nikki) to further bring life to their little world within our Nintendo systems and features. There's a new Nintendo Direct online conference coming up tomorrow, though, and the first global one since last fall, several months ago. While I don't expect we'll hear much - if anything - about the Wii U just yet (And the GDC is coming up at the beginning of March, so if they tease anything Wii U soon, it may be tehre.), I suspect this will be the event at which they unveil the Nintendo Network on a more global level and perhaps set a timeframe in which we should expect the arrival of the next major 3DS firmware update to connect with our Nintendo Network accounts, add new features, and so on, given that it's been nearly 3 months since last update, and that one was pretty massive. Of course, I also expect we'll see more 3DS - and potentially 3DS Download - titles revealed there. And very possibly some unexpected surprises. I'm not expecting any major answers on questions we might have about on online virtual Mii world just yet, but with the launch of the Nintendo Network looming near and Iwata having referred to many and various services being planned for this leap forward much further into the online arena, things are only going to get more interesting.