Over the past year Nintendo has released several improvements that many have been asking for, such as the ability to add tags to posts and an increase in the character limit from 100 to 200. While this is great for overall features of Miiverse, there’s still a lot Nintendo can do to improve the service. Here’s what we’d like to see.
1. Put Miiverse on the Nintendo 3DS and offer Unified Accounts.
Fans of Nintendo have been asking for this since the Wii U launched. It makes sense. Social networks are infinitely more enjoyable when you can check them while on the go, and some of recent features of the Nintendo 3DS make a perfect fit for Miiverse. For example, the ability to take screenshots in Animal Crossing: New Leaf in order to share online. With a dedicated community for Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Miiverse could spawn any number of trades and foster a real community surrounding the game that is usually found in places like GameFAQs forums.
Having Miiverse on the Nintendo 3DS would mean that your Nintendo Network ID would need to be integrated into the 3DS as well, which is likely what keeps a Miiverse app from appearing on the handheld just yet. Still, this is our number one improvement that Nintendo could make to Miiverse to make it more enjoyable for those who own both Nintendo console and their handheld.
2. Add colors to the drawing comments on Miiverse.
We’ve seen the amazing and talented artists of Miiverse at work with black and white for a year now. Let’s give them color and see what they can do with that. Even a small 16 color palette to work with could create some amazing pieces of artwork and this is one of the simplest improvements to Miiverse that I can think of. Often times I cruise Miiverse just to look at the amazing things people have drawn and adding color to the service would increase enjoyment of that ten fold.
3. Allow user created groups for gamers.
This one is a point of contention because the Miiverse is heavily moderated. Allowing users to create their own groups would defeat this heavy moderation, but I think it’s something Nintendo needs to eventually allow. Gamers come from all walks of life and being able to have their own forum on the Wii U is a great way to bring people together. For example, Wii U Daily would have its own Miiverse group for you to join, chat with other readers, and share your Nintendo Network ID for online play.
While it would be impossible for Nintendo to moderate the content of user created groups, I think a sufficient warning that a user is joining a 3rd party group on Miiverse and as such, communications will not be moderated would be sufficient for those worried about exposing children to unmoderated content on Miiverse. Perhaps a parental setting completely disallowing 3rd party groups on children’s consoles could work as well.
4. Bring some sort of video chat to Miiverse.
Wii U Chat is a great feature for talking to friends or watching TV together if you use your Wii U a lot, but Nintendo is missing an opportunity by confining it strictly outside of Miiverse. Allowing video content to be posted similar to Twitter’s Vine could be one way this is implemented, where users produce humorous content based on reactions to games, or ask questions for the community to answer. It adds a human element to Miiverse that can’t be experienced through text and moderation of video clips wouldn’t be much harder if they’re limited to a short 5 to 10 seconds.
5. Integration with already established social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
This one is probably the hardest of all for Nintendo to implement, despite the entirety of Miiverse being set up using HTML5 framework. Yes, Miiverse content can be shared to these networks using a computer browser, but many more people browse Miiverse on their Wii U than their computer.
Ideally, having buttons for these services on Miiverse would mean you sign in to your account and once that’s done, hitting the share this post would push a link to the Miiverse post to your other social networks. It’s great for Wii U owners who don’t browse the Miiverse using their browsers.
These are just a few of the improvements that I’ve wanted over the past year in using the Miiverse. Many of you probably have your own ideas about what should be included in improvements to the service, so why not let us know below! Do you agree with any of the things listed here? Do you want to see something else?
