UPDATED 10:04 EDT / OCTOBER 29 2015

NEWS

Nintendo’s first smartphone title ‘Miitomo’ is more social app than game

Over half a year has passed since Nintendo Co Ltd first announced that it would begin developing its own smartphone games through a partnership with fellow Japanese game studio DeNA Co LTD, and now Nintendo has finally revealed a few details about its first ever mobile title, which is says will be available in March 2016.

The new game—if you can even call it that—is called Miitomo and is described as a “communication application that helps friends share fun personal facts and interests.”

With Miitomo, you create your own cartoony avatar called a Mii, which has been used previously by Nintendo for several games on the Wii and Wii U. You can then chat with your Mii, which will ask you personal questions like what your favorite hobbies are, and your Mii then blab that information to your friends’ through their own Mii. Basically, it sounds like a really long-winded version of your Facebook likes page.

Nintendo Miitomo 2

“In this way, instead of the users proactively sending their own messages, Miitomo has a unique characteristic that can be called ‘friendly communication starters’ as your Mii will automatically dispatch the answers you gave to certain questions to your friends,” Nintendo said in its recent financial results briefing. “These ‘friendly communication starters’ have an advantage that even the people who are less willing to send messages can easily participate. ”

The company added, “Another unique characteristic of Miitomo is that you may be able to find out unknown aspects about your friends or unexpected commonalities you share with your friend because Miitomo may pick up the topics that you usually do not discuss but would be willing to answer if asked. What we would like to realize is, through such communication, you will be able to deepen friendly relationships and have more people with whom you can play games.”

While Miitomo is the only mobile game currently announced by Nintendo, the game maker has previously stated that it would release a total of five mobile games by March 2017, so we will likely see a few more revealed in the coming months.

Images courtesy of Nintendo Co Ltd

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