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One of the more surprising traits of the current generation of console hardware is that the machines themselves have become definite places. Whether it's Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network, they exist in tangible ways even if there's no game sat in the tray or chattering away on the hard drive. The Xbox 360 is forever shedding its skin in this regard, adding and then cutting social features, moving from those swooshing blades through to Metro - not that it's called Metro anymore - in the space of three Gears of War games. PS3, on the other hand, has stuck with the XMB from the start, opting for cold, sleek, slightly impenetrable style, even if Sony's recently decided to give the shop a bit of a seeing to.The Wii, meanwhile, opted for an interface that sort of resembled the CCTV room of one of the planet's cleanest shopping malls: neat rows of TV screens flickering with little SD worlds. Now the Wii U's here, however, and the internet's a lot more comprehensively integrated into Nintendo's latest OS. The Wii U's the first console to be born with the age of social media in full flow, in fact, so it probably shouldn't be that surprising that the status update and its ilk have had an impact on the company's thinking. Nintendo's response to all of this, though, does feel rather surprising. With the Miiverse, we're finally seeing Nintendo's answer to PSN and Xbox Live - not to mention Twitter and Facebook - and it's a very Nintendoish kind of answer.
Reading through Jeffrey's piece on the subject the other day, I was initially a little disappointed. The Miiverse is a grand sort of name, and I think when I heard it for the first time I probably pictured shifting, swirling constellations of Nintendo avatars: shimmering Oort clouds of bowl cuts, sunglasses, goatees and those funny little piggy noses you use when building caricatures of unloved work colleagues. In reality, when you fire the thing up, either from the main Wii U dash or in-game, with a tap of the GamePad's home button and a quick selection from the touchscreen, you're landed with something that looks rather drab and clinical: a selection of message boards themed around different communities, all of which currently relate to specific Wii U games.
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