About that Wonderful Wii U Start Up Screen

Where was Miiverse and more of that ‘personalized online service’ which Nintendo promised us? It seems that Reggie Fils-Aime chatted up those features up at Kotaku recently. Here is a snippet from the discussion.

”When you turn on your Wii U, let’s assume that you’re connected,” he said, “so when you turn on your Wii U what you’re gonna see is that home screen with all of the Miis and the Miiverse community, and what’s trending, kind of the key comments that have bubbled up through the system. So as long as you’re in a connected environment, that’s the first screen you see.”

You’ll be able to filter out uninteresting topics, in supplement to Nintendo’s own filtering devices, much like Facebook. The Miis will be: your friends, users with high-profile activity or “reputation” as it is called. Other appearances may even include Reggie Fils-Aime, or recognizable frontmen at Nintendo, delivering messages right to you. There’s also something they are calling ‘tiles’:

”These’ll be the key games that the community are playing, buzzing about,” he said. “Because of the deep linkage through Nintendo TVii with video services, these could also be movies. They could be TV shows, could be a range of different content, but it’s bubbling up through the community, with the exception of— I think the maximum of three tiles that we might be sending in terms of Nintendo thinking that something’s interesting.”

You’ll definitely be able to send messages to friends, recommend, and view what you like on Miiverse, even though it will be separate from the Nintenvo Tvii app entirely. To access the latter, or the game in your drive or the eShop, you would have to use the Home button. You can also choose to use more Miiverse social options, or go right to Netflix from the home page, even though there are no channels like on the Wii. Granted you are connected, Miiverse may also come into play in games, like New Super Mario Bros. U and whichever title a developer chooses to integrate the function into.

Although online networks will be explained in more detail in the next days, Reggie thought tipped Kotaku with a general idea of things to come.

“And by that I mean, it’s gonna be best for us to show the specific mechanics, how it works, for me to sit here and try to explain it to you without some nice visuals is gonna take our entire interview time,” he said. “The key message I would communicate to your readers would be this: We have spent a lot of time and invested a lot of money to get our connected experiences right. And so when we highlight how the eShop will work, how the Nintendo Network is going to work, I think people are going to be very pleased.”

Finally, as mentioned at E3, friend codes will make a return, albeit in a much friendlier form! Reggie reassured that it will be much easier to reach friends and add one another. “We’ve heard the community feedback on friend codes and we’re making it dramatically easier for you to connect with your friends,” he said.

So, is everyone burning up for their very own Wii U to be up and running in the living room? I know I am. Godspeed, Nintendo.