Fils-Aime Appears in Second Life, Talks Mii

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime has appeared in the virtual land of Second Life (pictured) and took part in a "virtual interview" with Reuters within the game. Reggie reveals that Nintendo may have bigger plans for Miis and possibly the MMO space. More within...

You may recall that in mid-October, the Reuters news agency launched its own news bureau in the virtual world of Second Life. Recently, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime made an appearance in Second Life and conducted a virtual interview with Reuters' virtual bureau chief Adam Pasick, who goes by the name of "Adam Reuters."

Reuters questioned Fils-Aime on a number of interesting topics, including parallels in the Second Life and Wii audiences, Nintendo's Miis, MMOs on Wii and more.

Commenting on the similar audiences, Fils-Aime said, "We have focused from a Nintendo perspective on bringing gaming back to the masses. We want core gamers as well as brand new gamers -- women, older consumers, people who never saw themselves as gamers, and that seems very much like the Second Life audience."

Talking about Nintendo's customizable Mii characters, Reggie acknowledged that Nintendo may consider building a social network around them, and that the Miis could even wind up in Second Life. "We have had so much interest from a variety of virtual networks out there. We have Miis showing up on MySpace, and other places, so I'd love to see it show up on Second Life," he said.

The Nintendo exec also believes that the Wii console and its controls could work quite well in the MMO arena. "The Wii certainly has enough power to drive an MMO and make it totally interactive. Are we as a first party looking at it? Not so far, but are we encouraging other developers to look into this? Absolutely. We believe with the nunchuck and the Wii remote it could be a fantastic MMO," he remarked. "There's nothing from a pure MMO standpoint in the pipeline but I have spoken with a handful of developers and it's something they're intrigued with."

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