Miis, Serious Business

Think that waggle machine is all light-hearted fun? Think again. Nintendo isn’t screwing around. Nintendo is dead serious. Listen to company honcho Satoru Iwata talk about Miis:

To Nintendo, licensing Mii is identical to licensing Mario. If you read Iwata Asks interview series in website, you can understand how Mii was created in detail, so I hope you can read them if you have time. Mii is actually the result of more than 10 years of efforts.

Mr. Miyamoto, the inventor of Mii, himself has been saying that, ‘In a sense, licensing Mii is same as licensing Mario — Nintendo should grant the licence when we can conclude that the proposed project is worthwhile. Should we allow any and all the licensees to use Mii licence for whichever projects, Mii’s brand image will be hurt. Because we are not granting Mario licence to any and all, we should not do so with Mii either.’

This is the current policy of Nintendo. So, at the software development stage, we are consulting with the developers as to how they would like to make use of Mii, and our Licensing Department handles on a case-by-case basis.

Wait. It took ten years for Nintendo to create Miis? Huh?
Financial Results [Nintendo via Siliconera] [Pic]