Wii Warm Up: Friend code rumor fest

As a Wii owner, and life-long Nintendo fan, looking at this situation honestly can we say anything less than "This is incredibly annoying and stupid." Shouldn't they have figured this one out by now. Before the November launch date of the console would not have been too much to ask. Wasn't it Tommy Lee who said "It's not brain science?" It isn't rocket surgery either. It isn't that tough, Nintendo, figure it out!

This is the one area where Nintendo is receiving validation (as they can't keep their consoles on shelves) that they should not, but instead get a slap on the wrists.

I won't argue with the sales numbers. Nintendo has gotten nearly everything right...just not this.

Mii-specific is genious. Wii-specific is annoying (I can't keep my stats seperate from those of other players of my console). Game-specific spells the death-blow to any real online community.

The Wii is great, and their online system can still be great, but they should take a page from LIVE's book and make friend-codes as easy as possible.

For example - Wii friend-codes could be entirely invisible to the user. If I play JimmyBoy in Strikers, I should be able to click a button to invite him to be my friend. If he accepts, the Wii's could trade all of the necessary codes and we would be on each other's list. If I don't meet my friends online, THEN I could manually enter codes, but I wouldn't have to -- friend codes could be traded in Wii messages. Jill22 sends me a message to be a friend, I open it up and accept. Suddenly the friend code is transferred and we are friends.

This shouldn't be hard. Even if the Wii wasn't coded this way, an update could fix it. This, IMO, would be the best solution to the madness that is friend codes.

Oh, I know SMS will be Mii-specific. Other games might even have Mii-specific Friend Codes too. But who ever said that the code for your Mii in Super Mario Strikers will be the same code for the same Mii playing Smash Bros. Brawl.
That's what I think it is - they're just letting you have MORE Friend Codes per game, they're not making it any more universal.

The only way this could actually help out is if you can trade codes by sharing Miis through the Mii channel. Otherwise, it will be just as obfuscated and annoying as any other Friend Codes.

It's a FACT that Mii's have their own 32bit ID so there is no reason why they can't be used, in combo with Wii ID's if needed, to give you a unique number that acts as a profile.

there is a chance that online Wii games will not use friend codes at all. Elebits can send things to other players using codes in the Wii address book. well i guess you do have to put them in once but that isnt so bad

and i like VidGuy's idea of being able to add people you meet online without having to know their code

I thought Falafelkid cleared this up

THE CODES ARE BOTH MII-SPECIFIC AND GAME SPECIFIC

One code per mii for multiple users of one game, but this has no bearing whatsoever on what will happen in other games

ergo: my mii; Mr Khan will have one friend code for Strikers. my other mii, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will have one friend code for strikers. But this will have nothing to do with my codes for BWii

Heh that's Atkafighter's mii.

hey, lets keep it simple here - i've got the game and you have a wii code, and a code for each mii. So for most people that's two codes, however many online games you have.