Nintendo is great at many things but I firmly believe that one of their biggest claims to fame is being able to convince us we want something that we didn’t even know we wanted. They do it time and time again. Think about it; they announce something that we aren’t sure about and then we’re hooked. Sometimes it might not even be right away but in the end, we usually all end up loving the crazy things that Nintendo releases. When Nintendo announced Miitomo there were groans and confusion all over the internet but I knew they’d change their tune.
I read a lot of video game news. My favorites on Google Chrome consists of 90% Video Game News websites. On Twitter, I mostly follow Video Game News and so I know about things pretty fast in the video game world. As soon as I started seeing Tweets that were saying that Miitomo was available for download, I was in the Google Play Store immediately. I couldn’t wait to check it out. The majority of my free time over the weekend was spent enjoying Miitomo and I regret nothing. I have talked with friends much more than I normally do and I have learned a great deal about them along the way.
I used the world ‘enjoying’ to describe my time with Miitomo thus far very intentionally. This isn’t a video game and if people approach it as one then it is really going to get in the way of their enjoyment of it. In fact, if it is measured as a video game then people are going to be very disappointed. Miitomo may come from one of the biggest video game developers out there but this is something entirely different from Nintendo. Miitomo’s goal is to get gamers and people everywhere interacting more often and on a more personal level. It is about having a conversation with your friends and learning more about your friends. Nintendo has always been about bringing people together with video games and that just goes one step father in achieving their goal. The world may be addicted to Facebook and Twitter, but we really aren’t communicating enough and this is the biggest strength of Miitomo.
With Miitomo I have talked with and interacted with friends that I haven’t talked to in months or if I did talk to them it was over the course of a few Facebook comments. That was it. Now I am talking to my friends even more and learning things about them that I had never known and, honestly, probably would not have asked or thought to ask. Miitomo makes interacting with friends addicting. You’ll enjoy hearing your Mii and their Mii talk and you’ll enjoy racking up coins, points, and rewards while talking to your friends. That’s right – Nintendo just turned real life into a video game. And it’s a blast.
I look forward to seeing push notifications from friends popping up in my world and wanting to interact with me. My wife and I had a blast answering questions side by side just hearing our Miis interact and laughing at, not only the way our Miis talk, but also at our answers. This is just so much fun, and it is doing what Nintendo is so great at: bringing people together and making it fun.
There are many rewards that you can get in My Nintendo just by setting up and registering different parts of Miitomo and this was brilliant because as a result many people have decided to give it a shot – and that’s all Nintendo needs to get you hooked on something: two minutes of your time. Miitomo is engaging and more personal than many other social media outlets out there. It feels like the local couch co-op of social media, whereas Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ feel like the online multiplayer side of things. Sure, they get us talking but on a more distant level. Miitomo has us asking questions we wouldn’t think to ask, rewarding us for interacting with friends, and we’re having a blast doing something we normally tend to avoid.
I’m excited to see how Miitomo grows and evolves with Nintendo, My Nintendo and their vast game library and vault of IP’s. I know it’s going to bring everyone closer and make it fun as well, in typical Nintendo fashion.