Those oft-discussed Nintendo friend codes may be more universal than previously thought. In an interview with Gamers.fr, Mario Strikers Charged producer Justin Dowdeswell of Next Level Games said that the friend codes used for online games are tied to your Mii character and does not change between games.

"Each Mii created generates a Mii code that never changes. This code will thus be used for all other online games in the future," said Dowsedell (according to a translation done by Joystiq).

Each Wii console can hold 100 Mii characters. There are one trillion possible 12-digit friend codes; some quick number-crunching reveals that Nintendo can only build ten billion Wii consoles in its lifetime. Only ten billion? Way to limit your sales, Ninty. (We're going to spell this one out: that's sarcasm.)

Update: Falafelkid at Wii: Definitive speculation contacted Dowdeswell via phone, who said that "he never intended to comment on any other titles, nor would he know about how they implemented online features."

Dowsedell comments as they appear above were a translation of his original words done by this writer, which we should have made more clear. However, we feel our translation was accurate to the best of our knowledge. As it was written in the interview: Chaque Mii créé génère un code Mii qui reste invariable par la suite. Ce code servira donc pour tous les autres jeux jouables en ligne dans le futur.

We have contacted Dowsedell ourselves to learn that, indeed, he is not sure and was not speaking for how online will be handled with other games. "We're just aware of how we're handling Strikers stuff ... That's not to say it won't happen, but I'm not aware of that," he said to Joystiq via phone.

We apologize for any misunderstanding of Dowdeswell's words specifically stemming from the phrase "all other online games in the future" (intended to mean Strikers Charged matches and not other Wii games).

[Via The Platformers]