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Wii U Social Network Miiverse won't connect with other social networks games focused

D

DaSorcerer7

Member
GI.Biz said:
No integration with Facebook or Twitter, but Nintendo hopes games with be the theme that attracts users

The company has finally embraced a clearer online strategy with its new console - Miiverse is integrated directly into the Wii U's system menu and games, allowing users to interact through text and video although it will be moderated with up to 30 minutes delay.

But Miiverse won't talk to other popular social networks such as Facebook and its 800 million users, restricting players' ability to share to a wider audience, although the long-term plan is to give users access to Miiverse from other devices such as 3DS, smartphones and PCs sometime after the launch of Wii U.

"What we have discussed so far... I think it is the other way around, from any devices in the future you will be able to access the Miiverse, from mobile phone or laptop," said Nintendo of Europe's Laurent Fischer. "You can check what's going on and even participate."

Rival console networks have at least allowed users to download specific social networking apps, but Fischer said Nintendo's policy is not to offer a service that is already available on multiple devices. "I have three devices permanently doing that already, what is our benefit to do so also?" he said.

Instead, Nintendo will offer basic functions of social services that Fischer admits are not revolutionary but he believes have so far been missing from the console gaming environment.

"On the Wii U we do have additional reasons for connecting, we talked about things like the video chat system, nothing revolutionary but it's going to be convenient, it's going to be easy.

"And the Miiverse is the one actually that I believe has a very unique feature which is we put ourselves in the situation of making sure the people you can communicate with they are somehow already in a kind of community. The community will be the Wii U owners, who will have this common interest for video games and our expectation about that is it's going to be a way to enhance the idea of sharing information on the video game."

There are multiple independent social networking tools and services for gamers already available, with third-party publishers also creating their own such as Ubisoft's U-Play. Fischer hopes the Miiverse community will grow through its love of games and also help game sales spread virally through recommendations.

"One thing that is very important to us is that somehow you could pick up information from people you trust, maybe on games that you wouldn't consider naturally. Because Miiverse will show you what are the topics or the games played at the moment within the community. And then you may have one interesting comment that will trigger your curiosity and then maybe you will get more information on that game and then at the end what is important to make sure people have different game play experiences. So considering a game that you wouldn't consider it's like enlarging your scope in terms of gaming, and that's the key point for us," he concluded.
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GamesIndustry.biz
 
Bummer. By far the most convenient way to find friends on a new social network is to hook it up to your old social networks. Steam has this functionality--to automatically add any of your Facebook friends to your Steam list. I'd love to get a Wii U and have my IRL friends automatically added to me as they got them.

Rival console networks have at least allowed users to download specific social networking apps, but Fischer said Nintendo's policy is not to offer a service that is already available on multiple devices. "I have three devices permanently doing that already, what is our benefit to do so also?" he said.
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Wii U not to have Netflix, Youtube, or Hulu support...

... oh wait, it will?
 
Spieler Eins said:
Wasn't it pretty clear that this is its own thing?
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Yeah, this is Nintendo trying to emulate Facebook/Twitter for a specific context. That being games.

The moment they said Miiverse was going to be a web-based application made it obvious as to the direction they were going in.
 
When they release their web-app somebody will connect them.

All someone would need to do is look at what their website does for friending and messaging and copy that in a Facebook or Google+ app, or at worst, write an engine for scraping the site for data in a similar way to which the mobile neogaf site used to when it was at secondapps.com

So if nothing else, this is a good opportunity for website / app developers.
 
Nintendo would be smart to have it connect, even if it's just basic sharing features, to other networks. It gets your product out there. A buddy's game-related text posts, achievements and screenshots show the experience they're having and is a much better marketing tool than a commercial will ever be, IMO.
 
Blueblur1 said:
Nintendo would be smart to have it connect, even if it's just basic sharing features, to other networks. It gets your product out there. A buddy's game-related text posts, achievements and screenshots show the experience they're having and is a much better marketing tool than a commercial will ever be, IMO.
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Funny, when I have a friend that does that I usually get annoyed and remove them from whatever social network we are on.


Desiato said:
Awesome. I don't want my Facebook feed to become polluted with someone's achievements I don't give a fuck about.
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This.
 
Incredibly stupid. It's 20-fucking-12; the option should at least be there for those who want to enable it.

Heck, even DSi at least has rudimentary Facebook integration for uploading photos. It's kind of remarkable that Nintendo has taken a step backwards from that with its next two platforms.
 
wsippel said:
Netflix, Youtube and Hulu are social networks now...?
Click to expand...

They are services that are available through other devices. Therefore this quote doesn't jive with not allowing Facebook\Tweeter unlike Netflix and the rest.
but Fischer said Nintendo's policy is not to offer a service that is already available on multiple devices
Click to expand...
 
I'm okay with this, I hate the idea of games forcing facebook integration which means I either have to make a bogus account I don't mind flooding with game spam or miss out on the relevant features altogether. However, they should definitely update it with a per game option for certain notifications to be shared on facebook and other networks. How much could it help them if a random user's 100s of "friends" or "followers" saw he/she lost 25kg via Wii Fit U over a long period of daily calorie burn and weight loss goal achievement updates, for example? I think a lot. Similarly for more hardcore games though. It's free marketing. But yeah, that's all they're missing out on by doing this, free marketing, nothing that's truly important for the end user. Of course everyone will suddenly hate it, as if the others are doing this (correct me if they are, I haven't seen any Xbox powered updates on my facebook). And no, this doesn't make Miiverse isolated, you will be able to view statistics and updates from other web enabled devices as far as we know, not to mention visit facebook and any other website right from the console's browser if not specific apps.
 
Old E3 news is old, like so many threads recently, but, it's still a dumb idea. I can sign in to random Joe Average's web site with my Facebook info, and have it automatically hook in to my already existing social network. Why can't I do that with the new Nintendo console, which is supposed to be all about online? Why would I want to refriend online people? Nintendo really seems to be missing the boat on why Xbox Live and Steam are such powerful services for moving sales - it shows what your friends are playing. Nintendo thinks they've hit the jackpot by letting you see what everyone is playing. They're wrong.
 
Pociask said:
Old E3 news is old, like so many threads recently, but, it's still a dumb idea. I can sign in to random Joe Average's web site with my Facebook info, and have it automatically hook in to my already existing social network. Why can't I do that with the new Nintendo console, which is supposed to be all about online? Why would I want to refriend online people? Nintendo really seems to be missing the boat on why Xbox Live and Steam are such powerful services for moving sales - it shows what your friends are playing. Nintendo thinks they've hit the jackpot by letting you see what everyone is playing. They're wrong.
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You can't add people on Xbox Live via a Facebook search either. I don't know why we're pretending we suddenly expected this.

You *will* be able to see what friends and everyone else are playing. It'll be the first and most-prominent thing you see when you turn on the console. They probably are onto something there.

It's also worth noting that my gamer friends aren't necessarily the same as my real life friends of today and yesteryear. I play with people from GAF and elsewhere online, very few of my real life friends are actually regular online gamers.

As I said before, this isn't too big a deal - someone will just create a site or mobile app that connects the two.
 
Really good news

1. I don't want to share gaming related stuff with my FB contacts
2. I don't want my FB account to be filled with gaming stuff by others
3. I prefer people be forced to use only one single method for social interaction; this way I can be sure everyone is in the same place, less hassle

Dumb decision but I expected nothing else from this clueless company.
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at least elaborate on your comments.
 
There are reason to use Facebook and most companies caught up in specific hype typically do so badly. Generally if you want to build up social features (usually with IRL identities in mind) Facebook is a great tool to leverage because it reduces the cost to the user in setting up accounts and connecting to people. However if the feature of your product is the community itself then Facebook is actually very distracting and can move or export too much content out of your service.

Since Nintendo is going the later it makes sense to not utilize it. The Nintendo content stays in the Nintendo world and becomes a feature of their ecosystem and is not being exported (often in a spammy annoying way on the Facebook side).

Stumpokapow said:
Bummer. By far the most convenient way to find friends on a new social network is to hook it up to your old social networks. Steam has this functionality--to automatically add any of your Facebook friends to your Steam list. I'd love to get a Wii U and have my IRL friends automatically added to me as they got them.
Click to expand...

You should suggest this to Evilore. Get a PM when your friends signup.
 
rezuth said:
Dumb decision but I expected nothing else from this clueless company.
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It is a smart decision. Would you create an social-platform and link it to facebook? So that they can spend more time there, instead with your service.
Are the people behind NeoGaf Stupid not to synchronize the accounts with facebook?
 
Does 360 show that you're an Xbox Live member on Facebook? Because I have about 5 friends on XBL that I know IRL who sent me friend requests and Facebook is the social media thing we have in common. I thought it was pretty neat but IMO not exactly a necessity.
 
I don't really care about this but I find it really odd that the dsi allowed you to upload photos directly to facebook (which I liked a lot) but since then there has been no new integration between Nintendo hardware or software and social networks.
 
No issue with this whatsoever.

I'd much rather have them separate.
 
Nintendo says they are going to be connected and social this time. Then decides not to use the biggest social networks out there. Brilliant
 
Good. No need to contaminate other networks with info that's not relevant to most of the people seeing them.
 
LOL at some trying to spin this as "Nintendo am retarded".

This as as close to irrelevant as you're going to get.

What brilliant, gamechanging capabilities Wii U will lack! The crucial capability to spam twitter and facebook with constant achievement pop-up messages. Shit that people are fast coming to despise.
 
linko9 said:
Good. No need to contaminate other networks with info that's not relevant to most of the people seeing them.
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Its a blessing and a curse, nothing I hate seeing more than tweets/updates from Raptr or GetGlue, but it does allow the message to get out there for more people.

If nothing else should have the option or perhaps a 3rd party app can be developed for it
 
I don't care about Miiverse inter-connectivity, but I'd certainly like the ability to say check twitter on this large touchscreen device I am holding.
 
Basileus777 said:
I don't care about Miiverse inter-connectivity, but I'd certainly like the ability to say check twitter on this large touchscreen device I am holding.
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obviously that will be possible through the browser; and they haven't said the device won't get for example a twitter or facebook app, only that it Miiverse will not be connected; some of their other apps may even be connected to FB (I haven't ever used to be honest, but there is a button to share DSi pictures on FB)
 
walking fiend said:
Really good news

1. I don't want to share gaming related stuff with my FB contacts
2. I don't want my FB account to be filled with gaming stuff by others
3. I prefer people be forced to use only one single method for social interaction; this way I can be sure everyone is in the same place, less hassle
Click to expand...

Same here. My facebook is just for people i know personally. I like to keep my gaming profiles separated from my personal social life, as far as I feel comfortable.
 
Saty said:
They are services that are available through other devices. Therefore this quote doesn't jive with not allowing Facebook\Tweeter unlike Netflix and the rest.
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The context is not just "services", but "social network services". It's in the article. Also, Netflix, Hulu and Youtube are 3rd party apps - Facebook is most likely free to do a Facebook app for Wii U.
 
walking fiend said:
Really good news

1. I don't want to share gaming related stuff with my FB contacts
2. I don't want my FB account to be filled with gaming stuff by others
3. I prefer people be forced to use only one single method for social interaction; this way I can be sure everyone is in the same place, less hassle
Click to expand...

Yeah, so you said everything that was needed to say about the subject. We can close the thread.
 
Very smart, informed move. Done plenty of studies that indicate the 'general population' are too 'embarrassed' to share their gaming habits on their primary social networks because they don't want their 'broad/general friends' knowing too much about their private hobbies. Lots of games let you tweet or post your Achievements or send out friend requests, but raw usage statistics are so dismal from your average consumer. There's much more of a demand to keep gaming social experiences unique to those who activately engage in this activity (i.e., a gaming focused subsocial network built around that hobby), so it's smart to see it integrated from an OS level. It'll get a lot more use with far lower cognitive dissonance for the 'weekend warrior' gamer.
 
wsippel said:
Netflix, Youtube and Hulu are social networks now...?
Click to expand...

Youtube is (just as Instagram and Flickr are), the others aren't, but if you observe the context of the quote, the sentence does not appear to be limited to social networks... and in keeping with Nintendo using the same logic on prior consoles for similar reasons (Wii doesn't play DVDs because you already have a DVD player), I thought the comment was worth a mention.
 
Rival console networks have at least allowed users to download specific social networking apps, but Fischer said Nintendo's policy is not to offer a service that is already available on multiple devices. "I have three devices permanently doing that already, what is our benefit to do so also?" he said.
Click to expand...

Nintendo said the exact same thing about non-game related features on consoles like 6 years back. Who needs DVD playback? We already have DVD players. Who needs media functionality on a handheld? My phone and iPod already do that.

And lo and behold, now the 3DS supports movie trailers, media playback (I think. At least the DSi did), picture-taking, web browsing, and other features our other devices do just as well/better than the 3DS. The same features that they teased the PSP for, saying "lol we make games, who needs other features".

So the whole "you already have stuff that does this" excuse falls flat to me because they've used it before and gone back on it before.

I feel like Miiverse should tie with Facebook/Twitter to add your IRL friends to the console.
 
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