On episode 18 of my Timetable podcast, which I just published this morning, I mention the new Nintendo game Miitomo. Federico Viticci also wrote about it today:
I’ve been keeping an eye on Miitomo – I still don't completely understand it, but I'm intrigued by the premise of a friend-based network with mini-games and the ability to collect coins. Those coins can then be used to claim rewards and redeem other Nintendo-related content such as games and customizations. I'm curious to see how Miitomo will perform outside of Japan.
For a several years between 2006 and 2010, I sold and actively worked on a little Mac app called Wii Transfer. It was the first time I realized that I could make a living selling Mac software, even though it didn’t always have great sales consistently by itself. To this day, one of the features I’m most proud to have ever written is the Mii export, which could sync Mii data over Bluetooth from the Wii remotes and render it to let you save your Miis as PNG files on your Mac.
I’ve often mused on Core Intuition that I stopped selling the app too soon. At one point I worked on a companion app to the Nintendo DS with similar themes, but didn’t ship it. And I considered building a version for iOS just with the Mii functionality.
From a blog post in 2012, announcing that Wii Transfer would no longer be available:
I’m retiring Wii Transfer to focus on my other apps. It’s not that it doesn’t sell; it still does. It’s just that it’s not an app I actually use anymore. By officially shelving the whole project, I hope to remove a psychological burden of sorts — to no longer worry that I’m ignoring an active product.
I’ll never know if it was a missed opportunity — a mistake for the direction of my indie business to stop selling something that people liked — or the right call to refocus around what I actually cared about. In any case, I’m glad Nintendo is doing something new with Miis. As I play with Miitomo, there’s a part of me that regrets not doing more with Nintendo-compatible software while I had a competitive head start.
