New Iwata Asks talks to the Miiverse (WaraWara Plaza) producers [Update: now with developers and browser devs]

Today seems to be a good day for Nintendo news. With the videos released earlier today about some of the features of the Wii U, Nintendo also put out a new Iwata Asks. The topic this time falls along the lines of the videos, with a discussion with the producers of Wii U’s Miiverse.

The link for this Iwata Asks is right here, and although you should read the whole thing, here are a few bullet points:

• The Wii U console menu was coordinated by the director of Animal Crossing.
• The theme of the Miiverse is “Empathy.” Nintendo wants you to have an emotional connection with the content.
• There are two “layers” of the Miiverse: one where you interact with your closer friends, and one where you interact with everyone.
• There is a “Like” equivalent to comments called “Yeah” that you can use to approve or “+1” comments.

The next Iwata Asks will be with the developers of the Miiverse, so look for that soon.

Update 1: Nintendo put out the developers discussion tonight for your reading pleasure. They mostly talk about how they got involved with the project of building the Miiverse, but an interesting tidbit did come out of the talk: you have the ability to take screen shots of games and post them to the Miiverse for discussion or help. There is an option once you push the Home button from a game to do so, and you can also label the screen shot as a spoiler or not so others will know to be wary. Pretty neat.

Update 2 (Nov. 8): IWATA IS ASKING SO MANY QUESTIONS. Today, Nintendo put up a discussion between Iwata and some developers of the Wii U Browser. There are some nice details on how the browser will work. Some of the things we have heard before, like how you can have a curtain come up on the TV to block what you are browsing until you want to show it. New to my ears, er…eyes is that your Mii will be displayed on the tablet screen, and if pages are loading slow it will fall asleep. Even better news is that they created Javascript hooks so that web developers can assign the buttons of the GamePad to do specific functions on their pages. That’s neat.