Nintendo has revealed that Miitomo will arrive on March 31 for Android and iOS.
Nintendo has finally announced the release of its first foray into mobile, Miitomo, and it's A LOT sooner than you might think. You'll be able to download the social networking app for Android and iOS on March 31—two days from now!
The app uses Nintendo's Mii avatars to help friends communicate in new ways on the My Nintendo network. You will be able to find out more about your friends through a Q&A mode, as well as collect outfits and accessories for your personal Mii avatar.
It's a little bit of a strange first outing on mobile for Nintendo, but the company has never quite been known for doing conventional things. The Big N still has a few more mobile apps planned through 2017 with developer DeNA. Let's hope the next one is an actual game!
Original Story 02.17.16:
The newly-unveiled Miitomowebsite has a photograph of a cup of tea and a bowl of fruit in the background. This does little to obviate the slightly ominious question printed above it, which reads, "Think you know your friends? Guess again!"
So what is Miitomo? The precise answer to that is slightly slippery. The best we can come up with is that it's a mixture of Nintendo's old Mii characters - those little caricatures you can make of yourself on the Wii, Wii U and 3DS - and a messenging service like WhatsApp. Nintendo says we'll be able to use Miitomo as a "social go-between" with the little characters interacting in a way that allows us to know things about our friends we didn't know before.
You'll also be able to take and send pictures to your friends on other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and there's also some kind of in-app currency system where you'll be able to buy clothes and hats and things. It all looks wide-eyed and thoroughly cute in a uniquely Nintendo sort of way. But the paranoid bit of us can't help wondering - what if we wind up learning things about our friends that we really didn't want to know? At the very least, there's the germ of an intriguing BlackMirror episode in here somewhere...
You can preregister at Miitomo's website here. The app supports Android and iOS, and we'll be giving it a test-drive when it finally launches...
