While overall impressions of the Nintendo systems are mixed among gamers, one feature has been almost universally reviled: the company's use of "Friend Codes" to represent players. By requiring users to exchange 12-digit numeric codes just to send messages to friends—and often register game-specific codes to play certain games online together—Nintendo made online features a frustrating afterthought on its systems for years.

Nintendo is changing that around for the impending launch of the Wii U, replacing the system-assigned Friend Codes with a player-selected Nintendo Network ID. The company is also making it easier to connect with people you run in to while using the system online, opening up what was once a frustratingly closed system.

In a Nintendo Direct video message posted this morning, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata introduced the concept of the Nintendo Network ID. It will eventually serve as your online identifier across Nintendo systems and also on browser-based and smartphone apps. Users have to provide a date of birth, gender, general location, and e-mail address to get an account. While the video didn't go into detail about how usernames would be chosen, it appears that users will be able to use an alphanumeric Mii nickname to represent themselves online, along with a custom-made Mii character.

Up to 12 users will be able to have a password-protected Nintendo Network account on each system. Those accounts will keep things like play history, game settings, browser bookmarks, and save data (though some games will let you share save data among multiple users). The Nintendo Network ID will also serve as your account for the Nintendo eShop, but anything one user purchases will be available to others as well.

Perhaps most importantly, Iwata said you'll be able to link your Nintendo Network ID into online services run by other publishers, providing a unified login for most if not all of the system's online games. Hopefully this will prevent some of the recent confusion we've heard from Wii U developers as far as online gameplay on the system is concerned.

Connecting to other players

With a new Nintendo Network ID in hand, players will be able to connect with real-world friends just by exchanging and entering usernames. That should be much more convenient than trying to copy down 12-digit numbers. But the Wii U opens up the process further by letting users interact directly with strangers on the Miiverse social service.

"Miiverse represents a great transformation for Nintendo’s online network policy," Iwata said in a new "Iwata Asks" interview with the makers of the Wii U's Miiverse social network.

The Friend Code system was set up to make sure Wii users avoided objectionable content by interacting only with friends that you know in real life, he explained. But the company soon noticed "some people put their Friend Codes on other networks and bulletin boards and exchanged them with strangers anyway." Leaving aside the issue of whether online-only friends and acquaintances are really "strangers," it was clear the Friend Code system was introducing a lot of hassle with no real protection benefits.

With Wii U, Nintendo is simply letting users become friends with other users that own and play the same games. You'll see a random selection of some of these users whenever you turn on the system, with Miis gathering around an icons representing each game in a virtual gathering place the company is calling "Warawara Plaza." These Miis will share a curated selection of posted messages and pictures from that game's message board in the plaza, and you'll be able to review play history for other users to try to find new connections.

The Wii U development team made quite a big deal about how having a shared experience with a specific game was a key to creating a bond between two random Wii U owners, creating what Iwata grandly refers to as an "empathy network." "In the same way that men and women don’t find themselves suddenly going out without talking to each other, in Miiverse, you talk about a game in which you are both interested in," he said. He even suggested this connection will help prevent the creation of "rude" content from users hiding behind anonymized user names, because "if you are tied together by empathy, I feel like real names become less important."

That seems like a bit of a stretch to us. Regardless, it's still nice that Nintendo is finally acknowledging console users want to be able to easily connect directly with people they meet through games, not just with people they know in real life. Thankfully, the era of the Friend Code can now become a historical footnote like the Wii Speak Microphone and the Nintendo e-Reader.