14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher and hardware developer Nintendo is ready to embrace social elements for its upcoming Wii U with the Miiverse, but the company is still worried about the way gamers can use it in order to attack its own games.
Speaking during a meeting with shareholders, Satoru Iwata, the president and the chief executive officer at Nintendo, stated, “It is very difficult to tell consumers’ real complaints from those that are posted as part of a negative campaign.”
“If we were to delete anything negative about our games, it could constitute a suppression of free speech and you would not able to believe in even a good reputation,” he continued.
The Miiverse will allow any Wii U user to create a profile and then join up with his friends and post opinions about any topic that’s interesting to him, including video games that are developed or published by Nintendo.
In order to make sure that only the well-argued opinions are clearly visible, Nintendo will implement a way to rate users and their posts, with the entire community essentially charged with making sure that the best content rises to the top.
Iwata added, “We cannot afford to always act on ‘the ethical doctrine that human nature is fundamentally good’. At the same time, however, we would like to believe in the possibility of ‘the wisdom of crowds’, which could create a very interesting and fascinating world, and make efforts for the services to realize it in one way or another.”
The CEO also made it clear that Nintendo would have its own moderation team watching Miiverse at all times, flagging and even eliminating content that they deem to be inappropriate.
The Nintendo Wii U currently lacks an official launch date or a price, but it will probably be out on all major markets before the middle of November.