The Importance of Miiverse

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - To Nintendo's strategy, anyway.

Nintendo, in their recent Earnings Release, has described part of their strategy to achieve the goal of 100 billion yen in operating profit for the next fiscal year. 

Nintendo strives to improve the sales by communicating the compelling nature of our hardware and software to as many people as possible through our new network service called “Miiverse,” which offers an environment where people can empathize with others and share their gaming experiences.

Well, yeah, that sounds about right. So Miiverse is going to go from something that's extremely value-adding to the WiiU to much more of an advertising service. Nintendo already tried this tactic with direct advertising notifications on both the Wii (especially through the Nintendo Channel) and the 3DS. Of particular note for the 3DS, Nintendo seems to be advertising its first- and second-party products through special Swapnotes more than they did on the Wii.



Nintendo's feature screenshot of Miiverse on their website has a slightly outdated interface.

From personal experience, a lot of users of Miiverse aren't as well-educated on the industry and products as I would like. So simple awareness that products exist via Miiverse would help. But for all of the users of Miiverse who are die-hard fans like yours truly, we already know these exist. So how will Miiverse be effective? Word-of-mouth, of course.

However, word-of-mouth is already being employed and it's not helping a lot of games. For example,  the game The Croods: Prehistoric Party! published by D3 Publisher, barely has any reviews available to read. It has a Miiverse community, where many of the posts are dedicated to mocking the game for being absolutely awful. To the uneducated consumer, they would read all of this word-of-mouth that is their only source of information (due to lack of reviews) and avoid buying this licensed cash-grab. D3 Publisher chose to release this game only on Nintendo systems, presumably because the target market for their game fits Nintendo's perceived kiddy image. While it probably does not matter if this game flops (does anyone care what D3 Publisher publishes?), the risk of negative word-of-mouth and Nintendo only advertising first- and second-party games could scare off precious and coveted third-party developers.

Oh, right. Nintendo mentions Miiverse one other time in its Earning Release.

In addition to improving the hardware profitability of the “Wii U” system that was launched last year, we will enrich its software library, which can convey the compelling nature of the system, and utilize the new network service called “Miiverse” to widely communicate the unique value of the “Wii U” system and popularize the product.

How are they going to advertise the Wii U using Miiverse to people who do not already have a Wii U? I guess we'll find out.

Believe me, I really love Miiverse. It's the real sequel to the Nintendo NSider Forums. I do think their moderation policy is counterproductive to their sales goals, but that's for another article.


Speaking of Miiverse, Follow Ludwig on Miiverse! His Nintendo Network ID is PrinceOfKoopas. He tries to go there every day if he can.

If you're interested in Miiverse's dark side, check out Ludwig's next article.
Miiverse changed since Ludwig wrote about it here. Ludwig writes about those changes here.
A new Miiverse update in July 2015 makes Miiverse totally counterproductive and unusable.