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The first thing to know about Nintendo’s Miitomo is that it isn’t a game. Not really.
The way the company is describing its long-awaited mobile release is “an app from Nintendo that brings out a side of you your friends have never seen before”. So Miitomo isn’t competing directly against Clash Royale, Game of War and Candy Crush Saga.
It’s hard to say what it is competing against though: it sits somewhere between Snapchat, Bitstrips (which Snapchat has just bought) and any social app using emoji and digital stickers.
Miitomo was released in Japan earlier in March, notching up more than 1m downloads in its first three days. Now it has launched in a host of other countries – including the UK, Ireland US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and various European countries – as a free download for iOS and Android devices.
At its centre are the Mii avatars that will be familiar to anyone who’s owned a device from Nintendo’s Wii and DS families in recent years.
The app gets you to create a Mii character – including using your smartphone’s camera if you want it to look like you – and tweaking how it moves and speaks, before sending it off as a “social go-between” for you and your friends.
They’re nosy little so-and-sos: asking questions about what you’ve been doing recently to kick conversations off. You can also set standard responses for them when they encounter Miis of friends, although Nintendo may have to be nimble on its feet when policing how this feature is used:
So, Miitomo filters then… https://t.co/S7mLdiMW06
— Stuart Dredge (@stuartdredge) March 31, 2016
It’s like a chatbot within a traditional messaging app and is impressively on-trend, given that Microsoft has just announced that “bots are the new apps”. Although thankfully the Miis appear to be steering well clear of racism, sexism and drug-smoking. For now.
Kitting your Mii out with virtual clobber is a big part of Miitomo: there’s an in-app shop selling virtual clothes, which you pay for with virtual coins – either earning them from your use of the app, or by spending real money on them.
Coins are sold in quantities of between 1,000 for £0.79 and 105,000 for £54.99. From 250-coin shoes to 6,400-coin robot outfits, there seem to be plenty of items to choose from.
You’ll also need coins to play the gaming bit of Miitomo: a built-in mini-game called Miitomo Drop, which involves dropping your character into a Peggle-y pinball-y environment to win prizes, including virtual clothes that aren’t available in the shop.
It’s less a game and more a daily draw with bells on: a mildly diverting means to an end – more items. You’ll get much more amusement from the other major feature of the app, which is called Miifoto.
This is a photo-editing tool where you can insert Miis (your own and those of your friends) into photographs, adding in other stickers, text and backgrounds. It’s a lot of fun, and you can expect to see plenty of Miifotos appearing on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks if you move in Nintendophile circles.
That’s the main appeal or drawback of Miitomo: ultimately it will only be as fun as the number of friends you have using it too.
I’d say it’s aimed at two groups of people (who may crossover) – teenagers and people who love Nintendo. The former may be hard to attract away from the holy SoMo trinity of Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp, so that leaves the latter group.
Nintendo’s last public figures show it has sold 12.6m Wii U consoles and 57.9m 3DS handhelds, not to mention the 101.6m Wiis that introduce the Mii avatars in the first place, so there’s definitely an audience for Miitomo – many of which will own smartphones.
The younger members of that audience may be ruled out: my six and eight year-old sons would love Miitomo but its social and data-collecting aspects mean Nintendo has placed a minimum age limit of 13 on the app. That said, ask all the 11- and 12-year-olds on Snapchat, Instagram etc what they think of age limits…
If you’re old enough, if you love Nintendo enough and if you have enough friends who fall into both categories, Miitomo is an inventive and fun, first mobile app for the company. Everyone else? The wait will continue for Nintendo to make some more ambitious mobile games based on its most-loved brands.
The location-based Pokémon Go is due this year, with the hope that Nintendo and its mobile partners are already dreaming up amazing games that take full advantage of smartphones and tablets – while avoiding the most over-aggressive approaches to the “freemium” models that dominate on these devices.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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