Nintendo Reveals Wii Message Board Details

By Eric Wright / Wednesday, 27 September 2006

Nintendo has updated the official Wii site, unveiling a new part of the Iwata Asks series of roundtable interviews conducted by Nintendo CEO and President Satoru Iwata with the research and development team behind the Wii. In this update, entitled "Wii as a Shared Space for the Entire Family," Iwata and the development team revealed new information on the Wii Message Board. "At its most basic, it is a place you can write memos," said Shinichiro Tamaki. "For instance, a mother might simply stick a message like 'The snacks are over there!' onto the Wii Message Board. It's basically like sticking a message on the door of the fridge." While messages can be used for basic communication, the message board system will also have integrated functionality with various Wii games. "For example, if you're playing Animal Crossing, a message like 'Concert next Saturday in town' will automatically be posted on the Message Board. The user doesn't even have to be playing the game," Tamaki noted. "Or take a game like 'Brain Training.' You could post your results on the Message Board: 'Today, your brain age is 50!' "I envision the Message Board helping everyone in the family communicate with each other," continued Tamaki. "These days, because everyone is so busy, it is becoming more and more difficult for people to take the time to sit around the table and chat. That's where the Wii Message Board comes in. Even when families can't spend time together because everyone is always coming and going, a quick look at the Wii Message Board will allow the family members to feel the presence of the others, even if only slightly." Iwata responded by saying that he wanted the Wii Message Board to "collect memories over time, recording what different family members have done." Messages posted to the message board, which can be created and stored according to date, will act like a calendar. Or, said Tamaki, the Message Board can even be used, "like a diary by just filling in the day's events, and your game records are entered automatically too. It is a tool for preserving memories as well as linking family members together in an inconspicuous way." Tamaki went on to refer to the Wii Message Board as a two-way street, in that not only is it capable of storing information, but also sharing that information with friends and family once the console is online. Tamaki stressed that this information wouldn't be publicly available by default, but rather, "this network basically works in the same way as the one for Animal Crossing on [the Nintendo DS handheld system]. That is, connection is not possible unless both users register each other. That means there won't be any unwanted communication from strangers, like harassment or suspicious spam messages." "We've designed [the Message Board] so that you can exchange information with your registered friends," Tamaki said. As an example, he offered a scenario in which, upon buying a new game, the Wii console asks the user if he or she wants to let their friends know about the purchase. Then the information "X just bought game Y!" would be displayed on user X's friends' Message Boards. Tamaki also revealed that e-mails, photos, screen shots, and game data could be sent over the Wii Message Board in addition to simple text. Developer Tomoaki Kuroume spoke about the Wii Message Board's integration into the Wii interface as a whole, saying, "Initially, we included the Wii Message Board along with the other Channels in the Menu Screen panes. However, the Message Board has so many applications, and it can be used along with all the other Channels, so we thought it would be slightly misleading to line it up alongside the other Channels. In the end, to represent the way that the Message Board is working behind the scenes of the other Channels, we designed it so it would appear by sliding the entire screen. This means that when you turn on Wii, it's very quick and simple to see the Message Board." Kurome drew an analogy between the Wii Message Board and the bulletin board one might find on a university campus. These boards typically feature notices of events on campus, invitations, reminders, and other important information. Regardless of what's on an individual campus message board, the one thing they all have in common is that the information is public, or available to all who view the message board. This means that messages found on the Wii Message Board will be readable by anyone who views your console's Message Board and that individual users will not have private accounts. "Of course, we had a fair number of discussions internally about, for instance, whether the whole family should be able to read messages from [a user's specific] friends," Tanaki added. "But what we were aiming for was not an e-mail function. The idea of users having their own private space on Wii clashed with the overall concept of the console." Tanaki elaborated, "Just as we want the Wii Remote to sit on the coffee table for everyone to share, and just like your favourite Channel and your mother's favourite Channel are found on the same menu, we want the Wii Message Board to be somewhere where the family can easily share and exchange ideas. Everyone's entries in the calendar will go from being future plans, to becoming everyone's memories. With a device like that in the living room, I hope people will say 'Wii is just like a member of the family!'" The latest entry in the Iwata Asks series of interviews can be found here, and the series so far can be found here. Stay tuned to The Wiire on for the latest Wii news as it approaches its worldwide debut on November 19.