@WickedOrange: It would explain the Gamecube. Oh snap!

Just joking, folks.

Captain Impulse

@Captain Impulse: I agree 100%

Annex1

wow... this is funny...

Gears of War - 5 years - awesome game, great graphics

Mii - 10 years - what is it exactly? a head on a shape with expressions? um... I think that Nintendo was high for the last ten years or so

WickedOrange

..And?

Hixxy

@TitillatedOcelot:
Oh snap!!!

IntelSilver

@mownkay: You've won the internet!

Nintenboy01

Thank god kooky Miyamoto finally admitted this. Very annoying to constantly hear "Developers are lazy, why aren't Miis in all games" when Nintendo chooses to control them with an iron fist and insists upon using extortion to allow developers to use them in their own games.

Remember: if you're Nintendo, you can do as you damn well please on the console and even ignore your own technical requirements, but if you're a third party dev, you're screwed.

Telly_Vision

@Mii: 9 months, actually.

mownkay

it took ten years to create me????

Mii

I dont know about Mii's but that woman's shirt fits rather nicely.

rubadub

In Miyamoto's GDC keynote... I guess it was last year, he showed a prototype of an face creation system that they developed back in the Famicom days. I think it was destined for some kind of animation game that never saw the light of day. That's, what, 20-25 years ago, not just 10.

It doesn't apologize for the idiocy of this statement though. Of course, Nintendo likes to approve everything, so it's not surprising.

I wonder what the average consumer's sense of Mii is? Wouldn't it be reasonable, once you buy a Wii and start making Miis and playing Wii Sports, to conclude that Mii is part of the console's general functionality, and that all games could use it? I could imagine people heaping undue criticism on games that fail to let them make use of the Mii avatars they've spent so much time creating.

ibogost

Mii-diocrity

TitillatedOcelot

A little off-topic, but did any of you Mario Kart Wii owners get a new decal in Metroid Prime 3?

Nintenboy01

Uhhh... Wut? I'm a HUGE Nintendo fanboy from the NES days and even I think that sounds pathetic. 10 years for 9 different eyes, noses, and mouths?

Nintendo, I love you, but that's stupid.

2NinjasTapedTogether

@Rocci1212: oh thats pure gold!

Grey Gecko

@VileMethoD: Friend codes are to video games as cancer is to my balls.

If that isn't Multitap material, I don't know what is. :D

Captain Impulse

Since Nintendo is not comfortable with their plans for the future of the wii and beyond the wii, they must feverishly protect any advantage they have over other consoles, and even developers who develop for a Nintendo console. Mii intergration could be one of the biggest innovations in user created content and gaming in general.

globones

Further proof that old-school "Nintendo Seal of Quality" is back, and taking over. Now that the Wii is the hottest shit since I shat on my lit stove element, Miyamoto will continue to beleive that his half-assed "innovations" like the Mii are all he will ever have to aspire to.

TitillatedOcelot

@Captain Impulse: You know, when the Wii first came out, I opted to camp at Best Buy instead of preordering one. (Good time by the way, drank the entire night in the parking lot and played games) I got home and I set it up and I messed around with the Mii's. I saw the travel feature and I assumed at the time that they would just naturally travel to and from other Wii's in a localized area. Imagine my disappointment when I came to realize I needed "friend codes".

Friend codes are to video games as cancer is to my balls.

I hate them. haha

VileMethoD

10 years to develop Mii's...makes Sony's HOME look THAT MUCH better, doesn't it?

Captain Impulse

It took 10 years to come out with the Miis... What fucking bull shit is Nintendo pulling out of their asses?

Sailorcancer

You heard them! They've been working on Miis since N64 days, which means they've been thinking about HDD storage too (real pioneers those guys). Which leads me to believe they've been arguing over 10 years about 512 MB of space... can you imagine the board meetings? I really think they were looking to one step the 8MB PS2 Mem Cards... lol

Seanross

If it took them 10 years to develop Miis then they could have at least dedicated one week of that development process to making more options for customizing the Miis.

I mean seriously, hot shots golf characters can be customized more.

NeoAkira

Well... this statement would be good if they ACTUALLY did something useful with them

Miis are avatars... Nothing surprising has been done

Chopper_Mike

My Miis give each other rimjobs. I think I bought the wrong system.

Clarke

Miyamoto: "Don't whore Mii out."

Rocci1212

More like it took 10 years for the market to be receptive to the idea. Miis would have never caught on 5 or 10 years ago.

imikedaman

@VileMethoD: Hey, Mii's can migrate to your friend's Wii and hang out...assuming you want to wrestle with the whole Wii code nonsenese...and...

...that's all I got.

Captain Impulse

@VileMethoD:
Cheers :)

Brian Ashcraft

@karasu is my homeboy: I agree completely.

I don't want to rouse any fanboys, but is it just me or has Nintendo seriously gone bat-shit-crazy within the last few years?

I'm not going to lie. Miyamoto scares the crap out of me now.

VileMethoD

CD-I anyone?

I can't wait to bomb some dodongos!

Clarke

....10 years to make Miis?

And mine doesn't even look like me. Interesting.

Makoto

"Mii is actually the result of more than 10 years of efforts."

This can't be serious? Did it mean to say 10 years? Or 10 minutes?

Either way it was 10 years poorly spent.

Oh well, maybe I'll care when Mii's actually do something.

Side Note: Bash, hope your wife is doing better.

VileMethoD

Why would they say that? Do they not realize it just makes them look feeble as opposed to elevating the Mii (I laughed when I typed that, what is the Mii some cultural icon now like Mario?).

Snake726

"Because we are not granting Mario license to any and all,"

Heh.

Green-clad Gamer Dude

Um. They're called avatars and they're hardly original.

So, let's stop the meaningless pr speak please.

karasu is my homeboy

Yeah, they look like they were created ten years ago.

TitillatedOcelot

Ok, clearly people don't remember Nintendo's past efforts to take peoples faces, or some portrayal of themselves, and put them in silly situations. This was accomplished by many of their games, and each was an improvement and another step towards the current Mii system. You might remember "Gameboy Camera"? You may have heard of the obscure Nintendo 64DD game "Mario Artist: Talent Studio," and the similar game that never quite found a release on Gamecube. Nintendo didn't just want an avatar system, they wanted one that could be adapted to fit into many minigames and be plugged into other games. This is what he's talking about here.

CyberGlitch

What?

10 years to develop an avatar system that is...well, probably 10 years old these days. Like people have pointed out, other games have far more customizable options.

I would really, really like to believe the line about how licensing Miis out willy-nilly would hurt them. Ever since they got rid of the Nintendo Seal of Quality...I mean, even with the gems that are on the Wii just look at all the shovelware.

Ugh.

Stoli

As far as the 10 year bit, if you remember from some of the press conferences before the wii launched, Shiggy talked about how they'd experimented with trying to have stuff like Mii's on the N64 and Gameboy.

Hellmark

Well Mario was licensed out to EA for NBA Street V3. Now while I'm not really complaining about that I'm trying to understand why they have problems licensing the use of Miis to teams under Nintendo itself. There are many Nintendo games that don't let you use your Miis. I'm not convinced enough regarding the "brand image" of Miis because by and large it has been nonexistent in many games. They should try to build this brand especially when people are asking for it.

ka2lu

Just more PRBS. Nintendo doesn't want to help out the competition.

mugido

Ten years of effort and that's what we get? At least they could have come up with some noses that look like they belong on a human being..

louven

"It took ten years to develop them"

HA! No wonder they can't create any new IP's

geoffcbassett

So, let me get this straight. The entire concept of Mii is outdated and not very good? It is in fact SO rubbish that every developer and his dog wishes to use it in their games? And, because it is as useless as it is, all the commenters think that Nintendo should allow every developer and his dog to use it? That is what I have ascertained from reading the comments above.

Sometimes, you just have to completely ignore the internerds. They rarely show intelligence.

CheekyLee - dislikes the long screen names!

It's about the concept, not the looks. I guess they have more ideas on how to use Miis up their sleeves.

Anybody else notice that in MKW's mall race course the people parking their cars (and thus blocking your progress) are from your Mii collection?

What other consoles/games do such things with personalized avatars?

(It's nice to have family and friends in my Wii Sports baseball team.)

JumpmanSenior

If you read the Iwata Asks thing about Miis it's pretty clear how Miis came about. it wasn't 10 years of straight development lie everyone here seems to think, it was a little side project that had been kicked around between different systems for years before someone decided to use it on the Wii. Before that it had been in development on the N64 and for DS, but it wasn't a serious project till they decided to use it for the Wii. They also talk about why there's a limited number of options for them. It was just a matter of making it easy for people to get a likeness without having it be some huge daunting character generator, and with all the celebrity miis and whatnot around I think it's been very successful at doing that. But for how big a deal they had made out of them they don't get used nearly enough.

t0yrobo

"Wait. It took ten years for Nintendo to create Miis? Huh?"

Miyamoto has been working on the concept for a decade. I've seen some retrospective where unreleased Nintendo games were shown which had Mii-like features; there was a N64 version of a game which featured something like Miis. I think this is where the idea started, and where the 10 years come from.

@ibogost: Ah yes, I think that's where I saw this.

BTW, I don't actually think he's implying that Nintendo won't approve Miis for Wii games, but that they won't approve it for products outside the Wii, such as Mii figures or T-Shirts. For users of the Wii, it's probably reasonable to assume that all games can access their Miis, and I don't think Nintendo disagrees with that.

L_K_M

I think it also means they'll want to be in control of what kind of games actually make use of the Miis, which makes perfect sense to me. Why's everyone so miffed about Nintendo being fond of their little creation? I love the Miis. :D

Kyuu

@ibogost: Ah, you beat me to it, Ian. ^_^

Shiryu

In case none of you ppl realise, the Mii's where already running around in Myianmoto's head as far back as the NES. We almost got them in the 64DD for the N64. It took the Wii to finnaly have them as visualised by Miyamoto to finnaly make them public. Why all the Mii hate around here? Everyone woke up on the wrong side of the bed or something? Its FRIDAY! Lighten up.

Shiryu

Ihope every one reading this realises Miis are more recognisable and popular than Dante,Tifa,Link,Nico,and Snake combined.

kidnicky

I hear the creators of the pet rock are very picky about who they license to as well, what with all the R&D that went into it...

Billkwando

@Kyuu:
Because Kotaku is to gaming as to AICN is to movies.

turk128

@rubadub: I dont know about Mii's but that woman's shirt fits rather nicely.

That was actually my thought as well.

On a semi-related note, how hard would it have been to get body types for Wii. Enter your height, weight, measurements etc. and viola!

@JumpmanSenior: Anybody else notice that in MKW's mall race course the people parking their cars (and thus blocking your progress) are from your Mii collection?

Yes. I made a Mii of Michael Jackson more to make my sisters laugh when they saw it. Imagine my horror when months later it shows up as a poster in the mall. o.O

I do think my Little Mac Mii is still the height of cool, though.

battra92

@kidnicky:
Ah, so that's why they were included in SSBB

Peffse

They should at least allow developers to tag save files with Miis. Hell; they should mandate it. In a multi-gamer household, being able to tell at a glance which save files belong to whom is a godsend.

Millennium

Has there ever been a more fun and pleasing avatar creation process than the Mii?

When you look at knock off games, it really hits home how much design work went into those things.

DrFresh

The mii in the back looks HAWT

Rengenki

Crap, the video didn't show up.

+ Watch video

Takuthehedgehog

Miis have been in the planning stages since the Famicom.

Takuthehedgehog

@L_K_M:
"For users of the Wii, it's probably reasonable to assume that all games can access their Miis, and I don't think Nintendo disagrees with that."

But Nintendo DOES disagree with that. Mii integration could be much, much more widespread but Nintendo keeps a very hard line on what games can use them and in what context. It's not something as simple as a system-level "get Miis for this," but rather an incredibly closely guarded option that they let very few developers and titles work with. Which is patently idiotic. I've never seen a system's potential squandered by idiotic software choices as fast as the Wii.

kthorjensen

So 10 years ago they looked at a wrestling game or something and started pondering "Hey, we should do something like that, but only let them customize the head and use REALLY simple features so we don't have to make a lot of parts!" Then a decade later they got something that worked? (And no mistake - it does work. You can make more charicatures than I think even Nintendo thought. They're just... a super watered down version of something you'd see in PSX games.)

fuchikoma

"Should we allow any and all the licensees to use Mii license for whichever projects, Mii's brand image will be hurt."

But you don't mind how much damage the Wii's brand image takes when licensees like Conspiracy Entertainment release, um, anything? Or Activision releases Guitar Hero III with mono sound, or Tony Hawk's Proving Ground with motion controls so weak, you actually think you're freezing the game?

Seriously. Someone needs to evaluate their priorities.

BtownDesignGuy

when they say the mii is 10 years of efforts, I think they're referring to the sims, think about it, you customize a character, and make him walk around and stuff, and they were first made in 3D about 10 years ago, Nintendo is admitting they stole the idea from Maxis!

Swizzler121

its not that they were developing them for 10 years.
its the idea, that started 10 years ago, evolved and now, its what we now know as mii.
i mean, you can upload your miis to your wiimote. holy shit, a controller with a built-in memory?! if thats not true next-gen, i dont know what else it is.

read the interviews.

murfi