Mini-Article: Where's all the Mii support?

Tired tonight, thusly, a short article. Sorry 'bout that.



Back in 2006, Nintendo released the Wii, and with it came a multitude of features. One of the features most packed with potential would have to be the Mii Channel. With so many ways to shape your blank slate into a person, new and unique designs are always popping up left and right. You can even take your Miis into games such as Wii Sports and Wii Play and use them as your playable character.

But as I said in August, too few games take advantage of Miis as playable characters. Here we are, eight months later, and the number of titles using Miis in such a manner are still just about as scarce. Is there any excuse for this? Honestly, I think not.

First of all, Miis can be used by any developer when making a Wii game, regardless of whether they're first-, second- or third-party. This has been proven with Electronic Arts' FIFA 2008, which even included a famous soccer player made up in Mii style. So availability to the developer is not an issue.

Second, it's not as if the Miis wouldn't fit some of these art styles. Carnival Games had a fairly cartoony and whimsical look to it, but players still had to make their own characters from scratch when starting up a new file. The art was perfectly suitable to the Mii's animation style, so that isn't a problem in many cases either.

A Mii standing next to this guy would fit in just fine.

So really, most developers don't have much of an excuse for not using Miis. They're available to any Wii developer, they blend in with many of the simpler art styles, and (From my techno-tarded standpoint) they seem like they'd be fairly easy to implement in terms of coding. So unless it's a realistically-detailed game with graphics along the lines of Resident Evil 4, developers have little to no reason not to include Miis in their games.

What do you think of the absence of Miis in most games? Do you think it's justified, or do you think developers are just plain lazy sometimes? Have your say in the comment section, or in this forum thread.

The Duck Has Spoken.