The Mii-specific Friend Code news from today has, expectedly, brought the panic prone and rumor mongering hordes of the Interwebs to a tizzy. I realize I’ve posted on it already today, but new information has surfaced that required I revisit the topic with some topical freshness.
Basically, a commenter named Ken over at Joystiq said this:
Basically when you get on Strikers, lets so you choose the Mii named: Kevin. The name Kevin will show up, and has a friend code directly linked to that Mii. It never changes, unless you delete that Mii. Now if you load up Super Smash Bros, and you select the Kevin Mii; It will have the same friend code linked to it, and will have the stats from your Strikers game linked to it as well. But if you log into Strikers with a Mii named: Sarah; The friend code is different from Kevin and will have a fresh profile.
Pretty similar to what Live has. (Except you can’t have two different Live accounts, without paying for it).
Suddenly the reason for the obscene number of digits in Wii Friend Codes becomes clear. With each console capable of housing 100 Mii’s, each with their own code, there needed to be several trillion possibilities for the system to work properly. In effect, each Wii console is now sitting on 100 different gamertags that can be deleted and created at will. You and your friends and family now have access to a plethora of “gamertags”on one system, each cataloging and logging your stats and achievements independently of the other Mii’s on the system. In theory anyway.
In one fell swoop, Nintendo has played at least part of its hand with the Mii Channel, showing it to be much more than just the quirky character creator the “gaming press” — and many others — all too eagerly made it out to be in the weeks following the Wii launch. It’s more than just a Wenis-creater — it’s a gamertag system on steroids. For free. And for everyone in the household. Or neighborhood. Or whatever.
Sure, Xbox Live still has an extremely easy to use system, but does anyone honestly see it being adopted on a massive scale? Currently 6 million people subscribe to Live. Does that number constitute a large amount of people? It is a large amount of Xbox 360 owners, for sure, but in the grand scheme of things it’s not many at all — especially when an entire country, Japan, buys only a handful of 360′s a week. Nintendo’s system, while burdened with these supposedly tedious Friend Codes, has much more potential with a mass audience. More people means more money, which means more attention, which means more developers which means more games. Simple.
But, you’ll still have to enter those damn codes to play your friends. Nothing’s perfect 
<Rant>Then again, anyone here ever dial a phone number and then save it into a cell phone? Do you complain about it? No? Then shut the hell up about Friend Codes. </rant>
I couldn’t care either way, but is this confirmed in multiple games? And what if the game doesn’t use Miis? A little early to get excited over this .. which in my opinion, is an unconfirmed rumour.
I don’t think they trumped Live (at least not yet if ever), but I appreciate your perspective and sensability. Jack always has his whits about him…
Oh and “It’s more than just a Wenis-creater” made me giggle. Like, 1000 girly giggles.
answer: no. not even close.
I think it will really work… Your Mii is your “gamertag” everyone in the household gets one. All the online is free. Games don’t have to “use” the Mii, just use it for the online connection. The friend list is exchanged Miis on your system, but the Mii can also be used in a mostly anonymous fashion for matched online play.
Does this matching, like we see in Strikers, use the gamespy technology like we heard about earlier?
Chris in Tn.
OK, I’ll shut up about Friend Codes already!
Thanks for the update, Jack!
Now, if this is true, it raises the question: how will that “Mii” system will work for those people who liked the idea of Friend Codes because of its implied security? Won’t an abuser of the service simply switch to a newly-created Mii to keep at it? Especially if every new “account” is free?
I like this, I don’t think people had a problem with this, my problem was what I thought was that EACH GAME would potentially give your Mii a different friend code.
About the phonenumber thing. Well put, very well put. Genius even.
i think falafelkid just shot this idea down. im pretty sure nintendo online will pretty much suck.
http://www.nintendo-revolution.blogspot.com/
The beauty of this is = . Your UID is the Friend Code but you are displayed in a list of names however you want. Right? No more “SWad3l_St41n3d_C4rp3t” crap. If this is the case, you wouldn’t need anything from the Mii area except for your UID and Mii name to play online across the board.
whoops… “this is = ” was supposed to be “[longa$$miinumber] = [Chris]“.
Hmm… Then they should remake the messagesystem on the Wii to be more Mii-centric. Every Mii should be capable of having their own addessbook and when a message arrives, and the blue light goes on, it should be clear to whom at that Wii-console it was sent to.
Or the Mii-friend-code would work as an alias for the Wii-specific code. So if you send a message from your Wii to the friend code you got when playing Mario Strikers with a friend, the message should pop up on his or hers console. But the other way would not work, since adding a Wii-specific code on your friend-list in a game would in theory mean adding all the gamers on that console in to the list. =P
Don’t get your hopes up. This is Nintendo ONLINE we are talking about. I’ll believe i when I see it. I don’t wanna sounds pessimistic but all these rumors only make people more angry when it isn’t true…
That would be awesome if it were true. But knowing Nintendo, we’ll have game specific codes regardless of the mii you choose. One can dream though.
BTW, that phone analogy is the best.
Xbox Live doesn’t have 6 million subscribers, it has 6 million users. In the last reports Microsoft were careful not to disclose the ratio of Gold to Silver accounts, so uptake of the gaming part of their online strategy could be substantially worse.
As for adoption rates, sure friend codes may be a barrier to entry for some, but I’d like to bring up a different issue here if I may? One which is never talked about: WIFI!
Xbox 360 doesn’t have Wifi. Adding it is expensive. Wii has Wifi in all units. How many homes getting into networks for the first time are setting up Wired networks? Now how many are setting up Wireless? Now how many of those would be willing to run a cable from their router/PC/cable modem/whatever to their TV, leaving a nice ugly grey CAT-5 cable to disturb the seamless black lines of their home theater cabinet?
I say who cares about friend codes! Wired networking is a much more serious barrier to entry!
Wow I hope this post was written with a sarcastic tone I missed. You can’t really be serious. This actually means you have to know even more friend codes than we thought before.
@elmer:
Great point. I will have to see it to believe it, but my experience with WiFi is that it can be flaky, especially when gaming with it. I’m really worried about this, and I see nobody talking about it. I’d much rather game with a wired connection, but I have faith in Nintendo.
I seriously doubt you’re going to have to enter a friend code for each person you game with. I suspect you will enter a gamespy-esque lobby and be able to add people to your friends list just by clicking on them.
Just because there are friend codes, doesn’t mean you have to enter them all in. Think about websites: how many times do you navigate to a webpage by entering its IP in the address bar?
yeah right… with 512MB of memory they will never trump live. i’m already out of space to enjoy the fruits of the wii shop channel.
I’m almost certain that Nintendo will create an alternative extrenal memory solution. It may be open to all standard USB options or it may be entirely proprietary, but in the mean time SD cards are open as an (ever cheapening) non-proprietary option. This is better than Xbox 360, where misuse of the memory by developers has meant that the 20GB hard drive is being rapidly filled and can only be replaced by Microsoft’s own proprietary rip-off drives. $100 for a 20GB drive? No thanks. you can get a 2GB SD card for $20, so I’d say SD is catching up to Microsoft’s business sense. Yeah, it’s not as much, but if you assume that geometry and texture data must scale with display resolution, and MS mandates 1080i support for all games, then Wii downloads will tend to take 6 times less data than xbox equivalents.
Basically Wii data will very soon be more equitable than Xbox data. Also I reckon typical Xbox users will run out of space at about the same rate as typical Wii users. Unless you bought an a 360 Core edition, in which case you’re screwed.
Nope – not even close. The beauty of a one-gamertag-per-user system is that the gamerscore and your game history is tied to YOU not a fictitious Mii. It’s about networking gamers, not weebles.
I love the fact that I can see what my friends are playing – not what their mii has been playing. Even the Gamertags are not perfect. For example, many employees of gamer sites and publications, as well as most xbox employees, have multiple gamertags – public ones and private ones that they use for playing unreleased stuff. That means you really never know what their gamerscore is or what they’re playing because they play across multiple tags – that’s the weakness of multiple mii’s per user. I was hoping they would tie game rankings and history to the player, and allow you to swap in and out mii’s like the XBOX Live gamerpics.
Rob, I think you’ve basically presented one of the strongest reasons people DON’T like Xbox Live. I don’t want people to know exactly what I’m playing and for how long and when and where. It feels invasive. With a Mii, I have a little personal barrier.
Lets use simple mathematics, shall we?
NDS sold until today around 41m, Wii around 7m. Let’s say 50m. And 5m people use it to go online. 10% penetration at best.
Xbox 360 sold until today around 11m. 6m XBL members (roughly half of them paying for Gold membership – an educated guess). 50+% penetration at least (with half of them even paying customers).
Jim, don’t forget the big difference between the two companies: Nintendo makes money, Microsoft doesn’t
With the first Xbox Microsoft lost $1 billion on Xbox Live alone, also on just 10% penetration, and despite having an income on it. For Nintendo to reach 10% (and a much higher absolute number) just 1 1/2 years after launch of Nintendo Wifi, on a portable system, while brining money in, without charging, and with a measly selection of wifi games is truly astonishing and validates their plans.
The difference between friend codes and cell phones is that as an actual grown-up, I have lots of friends with cell phones in real life, and meet new ones all the time. I don’t have any friends in real life with Wiis (or PS3s, or 360s…. just a few DSes.) So having to get to know people in real life and then trade friend codes pretty much guarantees I won’t be playing against anyone I know online at all. I’ll be able to play anonymous strangers, with whom I can never communicate or ask for a rematch at a future date, in some games but that’s about it.
I’m pretty sure the same is true for almost everyone else buying a Wii due to Nintendo’s “blue ocean strategy”. Teenagers have lots of friends with Wiis, and 360s, and maybe even a few PS3s. The grown-ups don’t. (I mean actual grown-ups with homes and retirement plans, not 25-year-old children in men’s bodies whose Cowper’s glands start secreting when they see a Halo 3 teaser. They and their “bro’s” all know each other’s gamertags already, and wouldn’t be caught dead playing Big Brain Academy.)