While Miis have been featured in first party Wii games such as Wii Sports and Wii Play, and offered cameo appearances in WarioWare: Smooth Moves, their absence from third party software is Nintendo’s fault according to an EA producer in an interview with Next Generation. From the article:
“According to EA producer Eric Chartrand, Nintendo hasn’t released the necessary tools to put Miis into third-party games yet. If the company wants Miis to become a lasting sticky application, it’d be wise to acclimatize third-party developers sooner rather than later. Regardless, Miis have the potential to usher in true user-generated game characters on consoles.”
The obvious choice for Miis in an EA game is the upcoming Wii Sims game gracing the cover of the latest issue of Nintendo Power. But why wouldn’t Nintendo go for this sort of idea? To be fair, most of the third party games that have been released on the Wii thus far wouldn’t really benefit much from Miis. I mean, I fail to see how games like Sonic would be enhanced with Mii support. Still, it would have been nice to have been given the option to hunt down your friends as tiny Mii Elebits.
Any thoughts on why Nintendo isn’t giving third parties Mii love? Perhaps Nintendo wants Mii appearances to be truly special occasions?
They might want control over how the Mii characters act. Imagine your Mii strangling someone in Manhunt 2.Then again, it could simply be that it's just a matter of time. The games, online multiplayer, and Mii support all point to Nintendo not giving 3rd party companies enough lead time to incorporate these features into their games yet.
Nintendo has to screw something up, or it wouldn't be Nintendo. Those morons, creating a system for universal avatars, then hogging the tech for themselves. Typical.
I think maybe EA was denied because they're probably saving Miis for Animal Crossing.I do hope Nintendo opens up Miis to 3rd aprties, if they don't like how it's implemented they can simply deny the license so I don't see the problem. Even if it was just a simple avatar to diferentiate character profiles, that'd be awesome.I wonder if the Miis themselves could be upgraded… (accesories or bodies of different types for instance).Imagine a Mii MMO =P
Perhaps they are treating Miis as normal franchise characters . If they lent Mario to every Tom Dick and Harry they might do something to them that they dont want done to their characters. Miis might just be limited to who Nintendo allows, which is fine cause some companies might tarnish them to an extent.
Mii cameo's are fine such as in Warioware, but who wants to play Madden with large-head-small body avatars? SSX on the other hand might be fine. (Think Mario All Stars from SSX: On Tour.) Or operate on them when they come by your office in Trauma Center… (SCARY!)
The idea of treating Miis as franchise characters kind of beats the purpose of their customization…And with Animal Crossing being so far away for Wii, I don't think it would have hurt having Miis in both Sims AND AC!I think something's wrong with Wii online that Nintendo is not letting be known: why wouldn't they have distributed development kits for online gaming already? That means there will be NO online games coming out this year, at least from third party developers! No online play spells doom for a current console.
Given the fact that we'd like third-parties to provide more "mature" (i.e. not necessarily M-rated) games for the Wii (at least not so "kiddy" looking), what do you suppose they'll do with the "kiddy" looking Miis? More "kiddy" looking games that'll only further cement the stereotype of Nintendo consoles are "kiddy." We can barely get out of that rut as is sans any more Mii-based games.